A holiday doesn't stop the world turning
Extinction of men, women making money from their eggs to drought-friendly beer; a lot can happen in a week away from the office. Here is a digest of stories that caught my eye.
Men doomed
University of Newcastle has successfully created a primitive form of human sperm from stem cells. At the moment you can eliminate any thoughts that this will be used to treat infertility in men, but who knows what our ethics may be in 20 or 50 years time. OK, I am drawing at long bow with this extrapolation, but should we go down this path, does this mean it won’t matter if the male Y chromosome disappears altogether, as predicted by some? See this link
Frost leads to flood – apparently
The introduction of a GM wheat variety with frost tolerance could potentially flood the world wheat market and drastically lower its price and profitability, according to Network of Concerned Farmers spokesperson Julie Newman. See Farm Weekly Online article
I wonder what would happen if we developed a conventionally-bred frost tolerant wheat? Would that have the same potential effect and would there be the same outcry?
Drought-friendly beer
This is a challenge for our water-deficient, beer-swilling nation, but one being tackled by scientists from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG). They plan to develop barley that uses about half the amount of water to malt. With backing from the nation’s biggest maltster, ABB Grain, and the Australian Research Council, they have already found genes that will help in the screening of barley for the right characteristics. Annually, Australia’s malting industry produce 790,000 tonnes of malt that produces about 7.9 billion litres of beer. Unfortunately, it also wastes enough water to fill 3160 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Dr Doug Stewart hopes these new barley varieties will cut the water use in the malting process by 40 per cent. Who can argue when it comes to beer.
Help with salinity
Researchers at the University of Adelaide have developed salt-tolerant plants that contain salt in parts of the plant where it does less damage.
These are GM crops, so will still have to run the gauntlet of public discontent, but if the workshops I run with various students and community groups are any indication, GM crops such as these (others might include drought tolerance) will have reasonably high public acceptance. Not because people don’t have concerns about these crops, because some do, but because they find any potential or perceived risks with such crops acceptable, at the moment.
Bring out yer eggs
At the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, Alison Murdoch of the International Centre for Life in the UK, describes a successful “egg sharing” scheme in which women can obtain IVF at a discounted rate, in exchange for donating some of their eggs for research. See New Scientist article.
Loane Skene, Deputy Chairwoman of the Lockhart Committee on Human Cloning and Embryo Research, which reviewed Australia’s embryo research and anti-cloning legislation in 2005, argues that women should be paid to donate eggs for medical research.
There are many issues here. There is a big difference between getting cash for any spare or unwanted embryos left over from your IVF procedure to getting paid specifically to undergo what is often an uncomfortable and potentially dangerous procedure to harvest eggs.
More stem cell tourism
And finally, the Weekend Australian published a piece on stem cell tourism: a story in the main news section and a feature in the Weekend Magazine. It covers some of what I mentioned in the last GNTIS blog post.
Jason Major