TechNyou

It seems we don’t trust the establishment, industry or anyone of authority when it comes to synthetic biology. And in the hands of mad scientists, which is what they naturally are, we are doomed to become dehumanised Cybermen (and woman, if Cyberpeople have gender distinctions).

OK that is a bit of an exaggeration, but based on feedback from our recentpostcard this is an inkling of what we fear when it comes to this emerging science, though it isn’t all scary. Many still think synthetic biology will advance society and be of great benefit, others are more cautious and attach numerous caveats to their optimism.

Genome Jenga – the postcard

Mid last year we distributed a postcard to all those places you see those racks of free postcards. The art work, titled Genome Jenga, was on the topic of synthetic biology. People who got a card could post it back to us listing their fears and aspirations regarding this science and technology.

The results are in with about 150 cards returned. Not everyone listed their fears and aspirations (some requested info on other topics), but we got a snapshot of what postcard-collecting people think about this technology.

The first caveat, of course is that it is likely that many of those returning the postcard knew a smidgeon short of naff all about synthetic biology and its potential, but that is to be expected. It is after all still an emerging science. Consequently, some or many of these comments will be gut reactions, or an intuitive response based on a couple of media articles they may have read – possibly on our website?

What is syn bio

It sounds like the original deed done under that fateful apple tree; some will doubtless place it in the same category of evil. In reality it is where scientists blend biology, genetics, nanoscience and engineering. It is, for now anyway, an advanced form of genetic engineering.

Instead of installing a handful of genes with specific functions as you would do to make a genetically modified organism (GMO), synthetic biology is more about systems biology – putting novel biological systems such as whole metabolic pathways into organisms. Scientists are effectively trying to rewrite the genetic code, though one must be careful of suggesting it is about creating life. The aim, should we ever get a handle on this science, is to improve medical technologies, human health, food production, biofuel production and environmental monitoring…and anything else the imagination can conjure up.

As for a definition, it is such a new and fast evolving field that there doesn’t appear to be a standard definition for it. But here is one from the UK Royal Society:

“Synthetic biology is an emerging area of research that can broadly be described as the design and construction of novel artificial biological pathways, organisms or devices, or the redesign of existing natural biological systems.”

Our fears and aspirations

The first and obvious point to note from our postcard list was the large difference in the numbers of aspirations versus fears for synthetic biology. Fears outnumbered aspirations – 86 to 55

The second point was the apparent bipolar nature of our visions for this emerging technology: There were aspirations for the use of synthetic biology in human health and to enhance specific human traits. At the other end of the spectrum there were fears that it could damage our health, be used for enhancement purposes and disconnect us with our humanity. It was a similar story with the environment. Many thought it could make a positive difference to how we manage our environment especially with food production, but also with cleaning up contamination or in the production of biofuels. In contrast many feared that synthetic biology could lead to extinctions, damage the environment or contaminate our food. This possibly reflects differing values people have about technologies in general, especially when the applications are what I might call ‘personal’. For example, food has strong cultural links and the GM food debate has shown that we don’t like our food to be messed with either at the scientific level or by industrial monopolies controlling the end product. In addition, we are human and tweaking with us at a genetic, or bionic level conflicts with our concept of what is natural and off limits for many. If Chris Toumey’s research is anything to go by, I would hazard a guess that the more religious or spiritual among us would have stronger objections to the use of synthetic biology for any human enhancement. Research by Dietram Scheufele draws a similar conclusion.

The aspirations

I attempted to divide the aspirations into relevant groups. These can be seen in Table 1(a) below

I did further divide the environment group into sub-groups because there seemed to be natural sub-groups forming.

Top of the list of aspirations was finding ways to treat what ails us, from cancer to growing new organs, to disease in general. I included here, “repairing broken men” although I wasn’t sure if it belonged in the “What the…”category. On the bipolar side of things, one fear said the technology would lead to more cancers.

With a reasonable gap, the various environmental sub-groups and human enhancement were the next most popular. There was a spread of thoughts about what human enhancements would be acceptable: living longer, boosting brain power, fixing busted spines, and bringing back dead rock stars. Again the latter might have gone in the “What the…” category. Interestingly, there were only a couple of fears along these lines: designer babies and zombies.  The environmental aspirations largely involved food, either using the technology to improve crops or generally, taking the big picture suggesting that it could feed a growing population or prevent hunger.

Both aspirations and fears had a strong social, philosophical nature to them. The aspirations tended to be more general in a similar way to food, or that it would improve society, provide a better quality of life, and that it would add to our existing knowledge.

The Fears

By far the two biggest fear categories for synthetic biology were us humans misusing or abusing the technology, and the unknown or possible long-term effects. We have effectively zero trust in anyone or anything connected to business or power. Put the technology in the hands of crazy scientists; or subject to political influence and we will see it used for nefarious means such as biowarfare.

There was a significant proportion of fears related to human enhancement and how it would lead to the commodification of humans, or demean what it means to be human. It was also thought that it could also lead to inequality, discrimination, create a class of us and them (or the enhanced versus the unenhanced). Or as one fear announced it would lead to the discovery of the gay gene which the ultra-right will determine should be eliminated from the population.

More Caveats

Sometimes people didn’t label what they thought was an aspiration or fear, so there was some guess work involved for some of the comments. For example is “designer babies”, a fear or aspiration. Some people I know think it a grand idea – within reason. Others find it abhorrent at any level. This went in the fear category because most people I talk to are in the latter camp.

What the…

Some comments left me scratching the noggin:

Re-create any of my ex-wives (I am guessing that is a fear not a request?)

Return of the living dead (Is their widgee board not working and this is a request?)

And some people just watch too many movies:

The Happening, The Fly…etc

And some left me ….not sure if I have a word, incredulous, maybe? I’ll let you work out what comments I am referring to – see Table 1(b) below.

Table 1 (a) List of aspirations and on returned Synthetic Biology postcards

 Table 1 (b) The What the…? and uncategorised (general) comments on Synthetic Biology postcard

Dates

2 webinars over two days.

The first, nanotechnology on 16 May

The second, biotechnology on 17 May

Start times for both:

8.00 pm Eastern states

7.30 pm SA/NT

6.00 pm WA

10.00 am UTC

What and how

The webinars are being hosted by ASTA (Australian Science Teacher Assoc) Online Professional Learning and based on TechNyou’s new Science Education Resource. Each webinar will include discussion of a number of classroom activities in the Science Education Resource, plus discussion with experts, TechNyou, ASTA and the developers of the Science Education Resource.

You will need to register with the ASTA Online Learning Portal to access the webinars. It is free, simple and quick and once done you can access the other information and stuff you can read and watch to prepare for the webinar – eg watch our videos and read the relevant resource worksheets for discussion.

Registration

To register for the Nanotech webinar go here for details.  To register for the Biotech webinar, go here for details.

Anyone interested in science education is welcome to establish a login on the site, and the only requirement is a valid email address.

Nanotechnology webinar 16 May

Presenter – Francesca Calati, Latrobe University and Joe Shapter, Flinders University.

This hour long seminar will open with a presentation introducing nanotechnology and its possibilities by Dr Joe Shapter, followed by Q&A and then discussion with Francesca Calati on the nanotechnology activities for the classroom below. Please review the videos and accompanying materials for each experiment and have questions ready for Francesca to address.

Videos for review

• Synthesis of gold nano particles
• Synthesis of ferro fluid
• Smart memory alloys
• Measurement of the diameter of a human hair using diffraction patterns

Biotechnology Webinar 17 May

Presenter – Jason Major, TechNyou, University of Melbourne

This hour long seminar will open with a presentation on the possibilities of biotechnology followed by discussion and Q&A on the topic and the classroom activities on biotechnology below. Please review the videos and accompanying materials for each experiment and have questions ready for Jason to address.

Videos for review

• DNA line dancing
• Oil-eating bacteria
• Extracting DNA
• Plant Tissue Culture

TechNyou

Researchers in Argentina have isolated a drought-resistant sunflower gene and spliced it into soy, but the anti-GM crop arguments in this case appear contradictory and fail to hold water.

News about the research and the arguments from Greenpeace and others appeared in a number of news sites including PhysOrg . More info is at the bottom of this post.

For now we will assume the crop can achieve what the developers claim, that it grows and have better yields across all climate conditions – from wet to dry. Apparently it even performs better under saline conditions.

The research team that developed the crop is from Argentina’s Agrobiotechnology Institute of the Littoral, created by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and the public National University of the Littoral, in the northeastern Argentine province of Santa Fe.

The researchers isolated one of the 50,000 sunflower genes. The gene known as HAHB4 helps the plant endure water shortages. They introduced the gene into wheat, corn and soybean species, followed by three years of field testing in different regions of the Argentina with varying climates and soils.

The opponents emerge

It is possible that the comments in this article have been taken out of context and in isolation as they are presented here maybe be misrepresenting what Greenpeace and others say, so I am happy to be enlightened, but here are my thoughts on the anti-arguments as presented in the article:

Greenpeace has apparently said this GM drought-tolerant soy will promote deforestation and the expansion of soy crops into new regions such as Pantagonia as well as cause a “significant loss” in biodiversity and force thousands of farmers and native people to relocate.

I find this interesting because the anti-GM groups are happy for a drought-tolerant crop to be developed through conventional breeding, indeed CSIRO’s recent news about their conventionally-bred salt-tolerant wheat was applauded. The obvious problem is of course that if indeed a GM, drought-tolerant soy bean did promote deforestation, loss of biodiversity, etc, then so will a conventionally-bred, drought-tolerant soy, for the same potential reasons.  C’mon Greenpeace…

Economics

Because it is genetically modified, the new soy seed would have little to no prospects of being sold in markets where such crops are opposed or outlawed, as in Europe, according to Greenpeace.

This argument may or may not be true, although they seem to sell their existing GM soy without any problems. From a purely personal perspective, however, I find farmers are generally smart people, they will make an economic decision about this crop. They will make an economic and agronomic judgement and if they decide to grow it, and can’t sell it and lose loads of money, then they won’t grow it again.

Increased pesticide use

Transgenic crops are far more widespread in South America, where environmentalists worry they could rush the shift to single-crop farming and denounce the encroachment of soy crops and the increased use of pesticides.

Again, I struggle with this argument because as stated above, a conventionally-bred drought-tolerant soy would have the same potential problems. If what they state happens becasueof the drought-tolerant trait, then it will happen regardless of whether the trait is introduced via convetional or transgenic breeding technologies.  A second point is that this crop’s trait is drought-tolerance not herbicide tolerance, so it is not going to change the herbicide application regime. Unless Greenpeace are referring to the fact that the increased acreage that might (or might not) occur because of the crop’s ability to grow in drought conditions in which case more herbicide and pesticide will indeed be used, but then that, as mentioned, would also apply to a conventionally-bred drought tolerant crop.

Final point and question

The research team has signed an agreement with Argentine firm Bioceres, which is co-owned by over 230 agricultural producers, to use and exploit the gene. Another company called Arcadia Biosciences is also involved. So this technology is not owned by a large multi-national; it is even to some extent public owned, and owned by the farmers that the product is targeted at. My questions is how much influence does this fact alone have on how acceptable (or not) this particular GM crop is to the public? As alluded to in previous blog posts the fact people hate and distrust the Monsanto’s of the world is one of their key reasons for finding GM crops unacceptable. I have even had people tell me that they would find a crop acceptable if Monsanto didn’t own the thing. So what about this drought-tolerant soy?

More information

IPS Inter Press Service News Agency

Image on homepage from PhysOrg

TechNyou

Another media story on GM crops, another long list of comments. The comments reveal that along with similar previous commentary we may simply fear Monsanto rather than the technology.

Adelaide Now and the Weekly Times published an article containing views of South Australian Farmers Federation president Peter White. He basically said we need GM technology and its use is essentially inevitable, calling for South Australia to drop its moratorium. As witnessed below, most of the people commenting disagree with him.  But as usual most of the comments have nothing to do with the science and are overwhelmingly anti-Monsanto, or express concerns of corporate control of our food supply. The science or the technology are barely mentioned.

Food control

Of the 58 comments 29 (or about 50%) were voicing concern about corporate control of our food by multi-national companies such as Monsanto. Actually, I was surprised that of those 29 mentions only 9 mentioned Monsanto. I thought there would be more. In all my public engagement activities, this concern is by far the biggest and I am sure if you analysed the comments of other online articles about GM crops there would be a similar response regarding corporate control of our food.

Real or perceived, there is concern that we no longer have control over what we eat or feed our children and that it is in the hands of a handful of insidious, nefarious, entities in some global corporate box happily counting their growing pile of money at the expense of humanity. They can’t be trusted; they are greedy, and seek total domination of the food supply. At least that is the impression you get from reading the comments.

The next largest category was my section called “other”. This simply contained negative comments along the lines of NO; or I WON’T TOUCH THIS CRAP; or NO FRANKENFOOD FOR ME. This was all that was written so I couldn’t categorise it except that they were against GM crops for some reason, and likely they were against any GM crop, whatever, whenever, which makes it value-based decision – most likely anyway.

Values

This brings me back to once again commenting on values versus science. There were only 5 comments that could be considered having anything to do with science and all these were positive comments supporting the technology in general. In some cases the comments might also be considered values-based rather than about the science, as expressed in the following comment:

“It always amuses me when Greenies stick their heads in the sand and refuse to follow the “overwhelming scientific consensus”. GM is safe and tasty and necessary for the survival of our species. I’d rather eat clean, GM food than food covered in megadoses of nasty “organic” pesticides any day.”

That is, it could be argued that this person’s values might be pro-technology in general.

Elephant in the room

Interesting, that this is one of the first times I have seen a number of mentions about the need to control population, though it was probably prompted by relevant quotes in the article. But in the context of food security and the need to feed 9 billion by 2050, it is surprising the issue of population control isn’t raised more often. From what I understand, however, the march toward the 9 billion mark is inevitable regardless of what we do. Whether we like it or not, the issue for society is how do we accommodate all of us.

The missing

Of note also is what people did not comment on – much. Only four comments mentioned concerns about health impacts of GM crops. Two made comments about potential health benefits.

Only three made comments about adverse environmental effects. Only four were about the lack of or desire for labelling of GM foods.

Obviously the overall sentiment was negative, but that sentiment was largely based on stuff unrelated to the science, and more about how we have chosen to use that science.

My question for everyone is what concerns, if any, do we have should a GM crop be produced with public or philanthropic funding? That is, there is no giant corporate thumb hovering over the research team dictating the terms.  Such crops do exist and are at various stages in the research pipeline. Should they develop a plant worth commercialising, will it be any more acceptable than one produced by or in partnership with a multi-national? Or will people, as I suspect they will, judge the crop on its traits and how it is intended to be used?

By Buck Sleg

University student

Buck is another of our competition winners we sent to ICONN (International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology) in Perth last year.

Buck has just started my double degree in Science and Advanced Computing at ANU and according to him, loves it, and so you would hope. Although he already had an obvious interest in science attending the conference made tempting him further to pursue something science-related in the future. “Going to the conference convinced me that lots of scientists love their jobs. It gave me a better view of how science works: lots of experts chipping away at different problems in the field, sharing their insights with each other, and gradually increasing our understanding,” he said.

This is Buck’s experience of ICONN 2012

Back in December last year, I entered a Talking Technology competition. The prize was a trip to Perth for the ICONN 2012 nanotechnology conference in Feburary. I had great fun, learnt heaps, and met all kinds of interesting people. I also got a taste of academic conferences, and quickly decided that they’re so much fun that I need to attend more of them.

I arrived in time to go to the opening function, which was drinks and nibbles in the ballroom of the Entertainment Centre. After meeting up with the Department of Innovation people who had provided my ticket, I wandered around, ate tasty food, and met interesting people, which was pretty much a summary of the whole week.

Pretty much everyone but me either had a PhD or was on the track to getting one. It was kind of scary to be so woefully underqualified, as a high school graduate. I noticed when I came home from ICONN how weird it was to talk to people who hadn’t studied science for years or decades. All of the scientists at ICONN had such an amazingly deep understanding of not only their subfields, but the whole of science, compared to most of the people I normally run across.

That’s my spot

Most of the scientists were friendly. There were a few of them who looked like my nerd friends will look in thirty years’ time, but for the most part they let me into their conversations and gave me their business cards. I had probably fifty people explain their current research to me over the course of the week, which gave me a bit of an idea as to where most of the current research is. One of my favourite conversations was with a PhD student, whose research involved observing interference patterns in nanoparticles fired through slits, which is a fascinating area of quantum physics. Another was with a researcher at CSIRO, who summarized the research on nanotech safety for me: so far, it all seems pretty safe.

Into the breech

Each day started with two major presentations. After morning tea, we had to choose between about ten different parallel sessions, which were all organised by theme. I tried attending some of the sessions with titles like “Nanocharacterisation: Materials”, but it all went way over my head. I spent most of the week in the sessions on safety, ethics, and legal issues related to nanotech. These were a bit easier to follow: “This nanoparticle seems to be totally safe in this situation.” I enjoyed these sessions enormously: I felt really important sitting in a room with some of the important people in nanotech regulation in Australia.

I met Greg Crocetti, from Friends of the Earth, in one of those sessions. He gave a really good presentation arguing that it’s really dumb to use colloidal silver as a general-purpose antibacterial agent, because that encourages bacteria to develop immunity to it. He seemed really smart in conversation afterward. However, many of his other concerns related to nanotech seemed to be fairly unfounded.

We also march on our stomachs, it seems

One of the highlights of the conference was the conference dinner. I sat with people from the ANFF (the Australian Nanofabrication Facility). The guy I was sitting next to, Gareth, was a physicist who has worked on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN among other projects. He had some interesting opinions on the future of scientific research in Australia. Particularly, he pointed out that regardless of discipline, large amounts of scientific funding are aimed at particular areas which will be problems for Australia in the future: climate change, an aging population, and so on. He thought that interdisciplinary research was important to solve many of the problems which we’ll face in the future.

I loved the conference. It was a shame for it to end. I loved meeting interesting people, who loved what they were doing. I wish I knew a bit more science, so that I could have understood the more technical aspects of the conference.

Nanotechnology is powerful. It’s going to massively change how we live. It was exciting peering into the future.

We asked them to write a blog post about their experience. The first is from Alex Kelly. His winning video is at the bottom

Who is Alex

Alex is a university student studying science/commerce. He is unsure where this degree will lead suffice to say that if it ain’t “fulfilling” it won’t get a look in.

By Alex Kelly

The Beginning

It all began on a blustery morning in the middle of the city of Sydney. Well actually there are many versions of how it began, some arguing about a singularity exploding, or something regarding The Sperm and the Earth Mother, and still others advocating The Big Sneeze. But regardless, this beginning is a lot more relevant and less existential.

I arose to the call of the taxi driver announcing his arrival, something I would have been grateful had I been wearing pants. As it were I broke several laws of science and a land speed record in my attempt at getting dressed, and was out the door and into the big wide world. The aeroplane trip was uneventful, beyond my discovery of THE SUPER-SODUKO, a challenge that brought headaches and frustration, so I tucked it away for a later date.

Soon I found myself rubbing shoulders with some of the world’s top nano-scientists and engineers, rather awkward shoulders to be fair; those of our persuasion are truly not the social butterflies we dream of being. But as the alcohol and canapés flooded the room, what surfaced was the enthusiastic chatter of people utterly convinced that what they are saying not only makes sense, but will truly change the world…

… well 1 outta 2 ain’t bad!

Here I also met my fellow competition winners and to be honest I felt I myself was a little underwhelming, how could I compete with those in such sharp suits (not to mention one glorious beard), but as the night progressed I was put at my ease by witty conversation (and more exotically strange tid-bits than even my stomach could hold!)

The Conference

Now I would be the first to admit that I’m not the bubbliest pancake in the pan, so my technical knowledge of the field of nanotech is rather limited – so I took the approach of running into every lecture that caught my eye, and writing notes so furiously that even some of the professors looked envious

Thus I ventured, from lecture to demonstration, from advances in the nanopatch, to carbon-nanotube structures in solar cells, more often than not at least improving my vocabulary if not my general knowledge.

And then by sundown I’d feast on burgers and fries, because a little nostalgia for home is always a good thing.

… also that was all I could afford.

The Dinner

Whether perhaps fuelled by the conference or honed from a lifetime of scientific pursuits, the minds of my hosts and fellow competition winners never seemed as sharp as they did the night we were taken out for dinner. The lightning rod was erected and as the iron table rose, Igor threw the switch, and conversation drew its first shuddering breath. Topics were mere fuel that we fed as fast as we could manage, from concepts of scale and infinity, to great satirists, back to environmental calamities and round once more to the masters of classical fiction. And at last! The climax was reached and the solution found. We had been enlightened; we knew… the answer;

Science is greater than Philosophy

I may have tidied the language a little, but the core concept is there

(TechNyou: I pestered Alex for detail on the philosophy versus science debate and I challenged him that science should be equal to philosophy. He might have been a bit disillusioned or maybe overwhelmed by it all, or simply feels that life doesn’t need to be that complicated because his response was the following: “it started off being a serious conversation on the benefits of both fields but just ended up being a rip on the philosophers’ debate”. Alex feel free to give me an earful)

The Return

And then the dream, like so many must, came to its end. But it wasn’t a sad parting; it had an aura of hope… of expectation. Perhaps it was the words of so many experts, or perhaps I’d found wisdom through the folding and creation of so many cardboard Bucky-balls, but I beat that SUPER-SODUKO, and damn, it felt good…

Alex’s winning video

TechNyou

A clinical trial involving treating patients with serious heart disease with stem cells has led to conflicting media reports. The mainstream media report a mostly positive result; the specialist media report the trial as a failure – or nothing significant. So what is going on?

Is this another example of sensationalism from our mainstream media, and in this case giving false hope to desperate people – at least for the near foreseeable future? I wouldn’t rate the mainstream media stories as sensationalism, but they are an interesting contrast to how the trade press are reporting the research. Even the conclusion of the actual paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported the following:

“Among patients with chronic ischemic heart failure, transendocardial injection of autologous BMCs compared with placebo did not improve LVESV, maximal oxygen consumption, or reversibility on SPECT.”

Doubtless there are some positive results from the trial but they were almost an anecdote in the technical media. The difference begs all sorts of questions about the influence of mainstream reporting of science (or anything I guess) and when does creating a story angle from an interesting anecdote mislead, or distort the reality of the science? Has it done so here?

Some mainstream media did at least say the improvement was slight and acknowledged that other symptoms remained largely unchanged. See the following contrasting examples:

From the mainstream

Headline and lead paragraph from The West Australian and from Yahoo News

Headline: Stem cell therapy could repair some heart damage

Lead: Patients with advanced heart disease who received an experimental stem cell therapy showed slight improvements in blood pumping but no change in most of their symptoms.

This following sentence about half way through the above story was the only hint the trial didn’t work all that well for the patients:

However, other factors showed no improvement — the heart’s maximum oxygen consumption did not change and the defects in the heart were not healed by the treatment.

Reuters had a slightly expanded look on this stem cell research

Lead: Stem cells derived from a patient’s bone marrow can help treat severe heart failure, but the results are even better when they are taken from fat.

The Nation (Pakistan)

Lead: Patients with advanced heart disease who received an experimental stem cell therapy showed slightly improved heart function

The trade mags

Drugs.com

Headline: Stem-cell trial failed to treat heart failure

Lead and second para: An innovative approach using patients’ own bone marrow cells to treat chronic heart failure came up short in terms of effectiveness, researchers report.

Use of stem cell therapy to repair the slow, steady damage done to heart muscle and improve heart function is safe, but has not been shown to improve most measures of heart function, the study authors said.

MedPage Today

Headline: Stem Cell flop in heart failure study

Lead: An injection of bone marrow stem cells into the heart doesn’t boost its performance in chronic ischemic heart failure, according to an early phase randomized trial.

Or from the more specialist magazine, Cardiology Today

Lead and second para: A new study found that using a patient’s own bone marrow cells did not result in improvement in most measures of heart function.

Researchers for the FOCUS-Cardiovascular Cell Therapy Research Network trial found no statistically significant differences at 6 months between patients with chronic ischemic heart disease along with HF and/or angina who received stem cell therapy or placebo for the primary endpoints of change in left-ventricular end-systolic volume assessed by echocardiography.

29 February 2012

There’s a part of me that just loves the idea of ‘resurrecting’ the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius). Come on – who doesn’t love elephants? And great big shaggy, furry elephants would be even more awesome! What kid or adult wouldn’t want to meet “Manny” from Ice Age?

Since the discovery of the mammoth thigh bone containing completely preserved marrow cells in August last year, there have been many articles speculating on the possibility of cloning the mammoth, within the next five to 50 years (depending on the researcher) by Japanese and/or Russian researchers.

Easy peasy – not

There seem to be two main hurdles to cloning the mammoth: 1) finding an appropriate ‘surrogate’ mother (an African elephant seems the most likely candidate) and 2) finding a viable undamaged cell. Since finding the undamaged cell is unlikely, the probable course of action (in very simple terms) will be the extraction of the nucleus (containing the DNA) from the mammoth’s marrow cell, which will be then inserted into an egg from the surrogate mother elephant This means that the mammoth will not strictly be a pure woolly mammoth, but will actually be a hybrid elephant/mammoth because a proportionally tiny amount of mitochondrial DNA is found in the egg.

Although this is all very Jurassic Park-esque and totally fun, there are a few ethical implications that concern me. The following are not considering the ethics of the financial costs involved, just the effect to the animals.

First, is it fair to the elephant? Elephant gestation is almost two years and they are famous for their attachment to their young, right from birth. Assuming that the baby mammoth survived, (and remember that Dolly the cloned sheep was the only success from 277 attempts), would the ‘mother’ be permitted to raise the baby clone?

Second, is it fair to the herd? Elephant herds, being matriarchal societies, are famous for their community child raising techniques, where aunties, sisters and grandmothers all contribute to the parenting of the new members, and all grieve when a herd member dies.

Third, is it fair to the clone? Even if they could find a viable cell (and they would need to find a lot of them to have any chance of success),  then create a viable embryo; successfully implant that embryo into the surrogate elephant mother, where she would gestate it for 22 months, being carefully monitored (which elephants can find very stressful), finally deliver (if she is permitted to deliver naturally, and there are no recorded cases of a successful elephant caesarean section), what would happen to the calf?  Would the calf be removed from the herd? I suspect that the clone would be removed and kept isolated and subjected to constant tests and research (and rightly so, being such an extraordinarily valuable creature).

And finally, is it fair to all of the unsuccessful attempts? Miscarried clones, clones with congenital defects or clones that die soon after birth… who knows how many attempts there would be to achieve a successful clone. According to the Roslin Institute (who were responsible for Dolly the cloned sheep), the techniques used today are still the same as the technique used to clone Dolly (Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer), (and I don’t know anything at all about the complexity of the genetic material of woolly mammoths, as compared to the genetic material of sheep, which could add another complicating factor) so I think it’s fair to assume that the success rate would probably be even lower for a mammoth than for a sheep. Do those unsuccessful clones suffer?

Scientific freak show?

And even if everything that could go wrong, didn’t, and they actually created a clone… then what? It would be a one of a kind creature,. If it were male, would its sperm be used to impregnate other female elephants? If it were female, would it become a breeding machine (assuming it could breed)? How many generations would we need to get back to almost pure mammoth DNA? How many unsuccessful pregnancies? How many maternal fatalities? How many clones delivered at full term with terrible defects? How much money do we spend on something with so many risks and such ethical implications?

But they’re so cuute

So I’m torn – I love the idea of baby woolly mammoths (of course, who doesn’t?) and I am mesmerised by cloning technologies and the advances in stem cell research, but is this fair and ethical? Am I anthropomorphising too much? Do I care too much about sad elephants? I am not a scientist, and I don’t have the research skills to even fully understand the risks and implications, but even as a science-loving non-scientist, I see huge, glaring risks here that I am just not convinced are really worth the outcome… right now. Perhaps with advances in technology, such as streamlining the cloning process which would decrease the number of attempts required, reduce the risks of abnormalities and even perhaps one day eliminate the need for a surrogate, the risks would be minimised to a more acceptable level, and the outcome would be worth the risks. I hope so.

TechNyou has previously posted on this research here

Other references

Woolly Mammoth site

Discovery News

BBC Nature

BBC Technology

Roslin Institute Cloning Info

CBS News

Live Science – Ethical Concerns Cloning

Wiki Wooly mammoth

Wiki list of cloned animals

Wiki – Dolly the cloned sheep

Nature article

Jason, TechNyou

Imagine if you could get 10,000 people to help you with your research!

We’re looking for innovative scientists to be our partner in three online citizen science projects.

If you have a research idea that could benefit from accessing thousands of people, then we’d love to hear from you.

We’re looking for a scientific research project that will …

• Appeal to lots of people;
• Involve an experiment/ survey/ test that can be done online.

It should…

• Be open to people living all across Australia, regardless of location;
• Be a valid scientific research project, associated with an Australian university or research organisation, with the aim to publish some results in a peer-reviewed journal or equivalent;
• Ideally, inform participants about themselves in some way:- i.e., they sleep more than average; their personality is extroverted; they got 60% correct which is average for their age range.

ABC Science will…

• Develop and run the online platform for the research project;
• Promote the project.

You’ll be responsible for…

• The science behind the research project
• Assisting in promoting the project (doing media interviews etc);
• Analysing the data collected.

Previous citizen science projects…

In the past we’ve done a Sleep Survey with the Woolcock Institute, University of Sydney where participants answered a long survey about their sleep habits, and had the option of filling in a 7 day sleep diary.

A multi-tasking test with the University of Queensland tested participants working memory, distractability and multi-tasking ability.

Both these projects attracted thousands of participants from across Australia, willing to give up half an hour of their time for science.

Other important details:
The period that the project is open for data collection will be from three weeks to two months, but will always include the time of National Science Week, ie August.

We’ll be running one citizen science project each year for 2012, 2013 and 2014 and are currently looking for projects for all these years.

Register your interest

Please send us an email that covers the following details:

Your name, position and institution:
Your  experience and areas of scientific interest:
Your proposed project – a brief synopsis of the idea including why this research is interesting and /or important;  the questions it hopes to answers; and how you imagine the ‘citizen scientists’  might be involved in providing data for your research.

Send you email to science@your.abc.net.au

If we like your idea we’ll contact you to discuss it further.

Please note:
Only proposals from research scientists who are currently working at an Australian university or research organisation will be considered.

Any questions
Please contact Kylie Andrews, Producer at ABC Science Online, on kylie.andrews@abc.net.au or phone 02 8333 2473 – Monday to Wednesday only.

TechNyou

The world of measurement is more than a kilogram or metre, it involves validating highly sensitive ways of diagnosing cancer, measuring and determining the fate and toxicity of nanoparticles, defining mathematically the precise red for a red traffic light and making sure we don’t lose a second of valuable time, fleeting as it is. It is also where you go to find out the precise metrics for the standard metre, or kilogram.

At the end of February I was in Sydney for the Australian Science Communicators conference. As part of that trip I visited the Australian Government’s National Measurement Institute (NMI). Yes we have one of those and it far more than a bunch of anal, obsessive-compulsive scientists fretting over the precise nature of a kilogram or nanometre, or debating the prospect of a leap second. Yes they provide the primary standards for all these measures and they can do it precisely, so heaven forbid the next butcher who tries to rig his scales and overcharge you for that rump steak. This latter role, referred to as trade measurement, is actually a responsibility NMI only took on in 2010. These are standards that have been set and these guys are there to ensure those standards can be measured accurately and to enforce those standards out there in the real world.

OK, maybe there are a small handful of scientists who are a tiny bit obsessive, but who isn’t. The majority are involved in stuff that is, to me, simply profound. It is mind boggling the scale and accuracy that we can measure things. We are talking detecting and measuring the presence of atoms and molecules in detail and in concentrations hard to imagine.

Cancer

Worldwide researchers have made huge advances in understanding the biological mechanisms behind many cancers and from this discovered molecules and genetic markers associated with these cancers that could be useful for diagnostic purposes. The problem is there are few suitable standards anywhere in the world to gauge the accuracy of these diagnostic tests. This makes proving the usefulness of cancer markers difficult.

(Standards are just a reference from which to compare something so you know what it is you actually have. For instance we have a set standard to test the acidity of stuff. It is called the PH scale. I measured the PH of my rain water on the weekend which was 4 on the standard PH scale – 7 is neutral – so I know my rain water is quite acidic, but within the normal range for rain water. Without this, the level of acidity in my rainwater would have been meaningless.)

The job the NMI guys set themselves was to develop some standards for the genetic cancer markers, specifically to develop novel genetic measurement technologies for the accurate measurement of DNA methylation.

Messing with methylation

Associated with cancers is the methylation of DNA, which involves a methyl group (one carbon and three hydrogen atoms) that stick to one of the DNA nucleotides (cytosine). When this happens, the expression of the gene it is attached to alters – eg, is silenced or switches off. Methylation is part of normal cell functioning and fine unless the methylation occurs on, in this case, a tumour suppressor gene. Methlyation in this case switches the gene off eventually causing cancer. If you could detect the occurrence and frequency of methylation you would have an early warning signal for the cancer. However, inaccuracies in the measurement of DNA methylation can occur at many stages in the process. Comparing results and drawing meaningful conclusions then becomes difficult. If DNA methylation is to be used as a diagnostic tool for cancer, the accuracy and comparability of measurements must be known and certified reference materials will be needed to validate prospective methodologies.

NMI scientists have devised techniques that effectively detect the difference in weight between the gene fragments that have been methylated and those that haven’t. Given that a methyl group is just one carbon and three hydrogen atoms that difference is very small relative to the scale of DNA. For those with some science nous they can detect a difference of 14 in 140,000 atomic mass units (or 1 on 10,000). For others the inaccurate analogy is their ability to measure the weight of two identical haystacks and detecting the presence (or weight) of the needle in one of them. It is an inaccurate analogy because haystacks can be a few hundred or a few thousand bales, but I just had to use the needle-in-a-haystack analogy.

Super athletes

Gene doping is a growing fear in the sporting world. The technology to insert into us copies of genes that could boost muscle growth, or some other performance enhancing trait is more than possible in the near future. The problem is detecting when someone has done it as the protein will be a natural one. Short of a muscle biopsy which will obviously impede performance it is difficult to detect. A method to detect gene doping is a priority for NMI and they have published scientific papers on an approach that could be suitable to detect gene doping by analysis of small volumes of blood.  I doubt that pleading ignorance and blaming your mum or your coach will get you far in this situation.

Other stuff they do

• Provide the tools for measuring the presence of transgenes in genetically modified crops
• Provide the standards and analytical tools to measure light (irradiance, watts, flux.. and so on) For example, if your traffic light isn’t the precise red then these dudes can coordinate the chromaticity to within two points, which I am told is way too precise for any human eye to detect the difference.
• Detect pollutants, and greenhouse gases, test water quality
• Collaborate with all the other international metrology institutes to develop accurate methods and instruments for measuring dimensions of nanoparticles.

On this last task NMI is part of an OECD project examining the full life cycle of nanoparticles – their fate and toxicity from manufacture to what happens once they are disposed of and enter the environment. And they have a cool laser machine to help them – see image below

Measuring the nanometre

Ultimate reference machine for nanoparticles. This is Australia’s primary reference tool for the measurement of the nanometre, which is then cross referenced against their primary reference for the metre. Every measurement in the nanometre scale will be able to be traced back to this tool. Once built the room it is now sitting in will be temperature controlled so that temperature will remain within 0.01 degree celcius (100 mili Kelvin) over a 24 hour period. It will be vibration controlled so that even the minor vibrations of the trains a couple of kilometres down the road won’t upset its stability.

Micro chip

Able to perform 9000 pcr reactions at once. Its neighbouring machine can take 20 millilitres and turn that into 30,000 ultra-fine droplets and analyse each droplet for specific molecules, a process that is done in the time it takes to drink  a cup of coffee – about 15 minutes.

The time lords

One of the atomic clocks used to keep precise time. If you are wondering why we need to keep precise time, see this story from UNSW