El pasado 11 de mayo, el Instituto Nacional de Medicina Genómica (Inmegen) presentó en un acto mediático, con la presencia entusiasta de Felipe Calderón, el llamado “Mapa del genoma de los mexicanos”. Se presentó como un gran avance científico, vinculándolo oportunistamente hasta con el estudio del virus de la gripe porcina. Obviaron sin embargo las cuestiones fundamentales: ¿avance para quién?, ¿quién se beneficia?, ¿a quién sirve?

Dieron a conocer la publicación en una revista científica de los resultados de cinco años de investigación en el proyecto ahora titulado “Proyecto de Diversidad Genómica de la Población Mexicana”. Inicialmente se proponían buscar las variaciones genéticas de las poblaciones indígenas de México, las cuales según los proponentes del Inmegen son una gran “oportunidad para la industria farmacéutica”. Posteriormente anunciaron que solamente tomaría muestras de poblaciones mestizas. Ahora el Inmegen reconoce haber tomado muestras de varias poblaciones indígenas, imprescindibles para “comparar” con el resto de la población.

Luego de años de costosos estudios, equipos y salarios (lo único gratis fueron las muestras de indígenas y “mestizos”), el Inmegen “demostró científicamente” que la población de México es una mezcla genética de poblaciones indígenas y europeas, con un pequeño toque de genes africanos en las zonas donde las plantaciones devoraban esclavos. Por si luego de 500 años de Conquista a alguien le hubiera pasado inadvertido.

Resaltan que en las muestras de México encontraron al menos 89 variaciones genéticas, cuya unicidad es que no habían sido detectadas en el proyecto internacional HapMap, un proyecto similar auspiciado por gobiernos y empresas farmacéuticas e informáticas, que en su primera fase se basó en el secuenciamiento genómico de 270 individuos de poblaciones africanas, asiáticas y europeas. En su tercera fase, el HapMap incorporó muestras de mexicanos residentes en Los Ángeles, pero el Inmegen no lo menciona.

Según el Inmegen, haber encontrado estas variaciones es un paso para desarrollar una “medicina personalizada”, basada en la composición genética de cada individuo y diseñando fármacos específicamente adaptados para las variaciones genéticas de la población mexicana.

La búsqueda de variaciones genómicas parte del supuesto que las diferencias genéticas indicarían la predisposición a adquirir o resistir ciertas enfermedades. Por tanto, además de encontrar variaciones, es necesario identificar si están asociadas a alguna dolencia.

Para ello, como describe el artículo presentado por el Inmegen, se usan mayoritariamente dos enfoques: uno llamado “asociación de genoma completo” y otro “mapeo por mestizaje”. En el primero se comparan las variaciones genómicas de personas con una determinada afección con el de otras que no la tienen. En el segundo, las diferencias con poblaciones ancestrales.

Lo que no aclara el Inmegen es que estos métodos han dado resultados extraordinariamente pobres para predecir y mucho menos para atender enfermedades.

Según una serie de artículos científicos publicados recientemente en la prestigiosa revista New England Journal of Medicine (23/4/2009), pese a los cientos de proyectos en curso y los miles de millones invertidos a nivel global, los estudios de asociación de genoma completo no han servido para explicar los vínculos genéticos con enfermedades, más que de una manera tan general, que finalmente no han sido útiles.

Por el contrario, para lo que han servido las variaciones encontradas y este tipo de estudios, es para dar jugosas ganancias a las compañías que fabrican kits de diagnóstico genético. Es decir, pruebas de ADN para diferentes afecciones, que analizan si el cliente –que pueda pagarlas– tiene determinadas variaciones genéticas que estarían supuestamente relacionadas con ellas. No sirven, pero eso no impide que actualmente haya más de 1000 kits de este tipo en el mercado, cuyas ventas en 2007 fueron de 730 millones de dólares y crecen a un ritmo de 20 por ciento anual. (Ver reporte de ETC “Pruebas personales de ADN y el mito de la medicina personalizada”, http://www.etcgroup.org/es/materiales/publicaciones.html?pub_id=680 ).

Salvo en el caso de las enfermedades monogénicas (determinadas por un solo gen), la composición genética no es más que una ínfima parte del surgimiento de las enfermedades. Las variaciones existen en una enorme complejidad de interacciones genéticas y bioquímicas de las que poco se sabe, y el desarrollo de enfermedades no es independiente del ambiente, incluyendo realidades alimentarias, sanitarias, económicas, ecológicas, culturales y muchas otras.

La medicina genómica es un enfoque extremadamente fragmentario, que deja fuera del ámbito de estudio la mayor parte de los elementos esenciales a tener en cuenta al pensar en salud y enfermedad.

Las enfermedades que investiga el Inmegen (asma, obesidad, cáncer y lupus), tienen un enorme peso de factores socioeconómicos y ambientales, determinados por pobreza, contaminación ambiental, mala nutrición, componentes tóxicos en alimentación y vivienda, etcétera, todos fuera de su investigación.

Si pese a estas graves condicionantes, los estudios del Inmegen derivaran en algún tipo de base para una “medicina genómica”, todas las herramientas para vincular las variaciones con enfermedades y para el desarrollo de medicinas farmacogenómicas están patentadas en manos de unas pocas empresas farmacéuticas y de informática. Varias de las cuales tienen, obviamente, una estrecha relación con el Inmegen, esperando ansiosamente nuevos insumos para aumentar sus ganancias.

Por tanto, los resultados de estos estudios, si no resultan completamente inútiles, estarán totalmente fuera del alcance de las poblaciones que, como los indígenas, aportan sus genes para finalmente enriquecer a las empresas de diagnóstico y a las farmacéuticas.

*Investigadora del Grupo ETC

Publicado en La Jornada, México, 23 de mayo de 2009

available online at http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=2053

Somebody somewhere has to have a cunning plan to fix our environmental problems and save the world – right? Jim Thomas sorts through the big tech ideas you’ll be reading about this year 

Almost every day sees new technologies being proposed to fix old problems. 2008 witnessed global technology fights over the rapid development of biofuels, protests against ‘clean coal technology’ and GM crops staging a come-back of sorts. In all three cases, ‘solving climate change’ was presented as the excuse for gambling on high-risk technologies. That theme is likely to continue. Here are a selection of technological controversies on the drawing board. See if you can sort through the silver bullets, technofixes and false solutions that are sure to keep cropping up this year… 

‘Solving climate change’ is presented as the excuse for gambling on high-risk technologies.

1) Geo-engineering 

Three years ago, the idea of re-engineering the Earth’s climate was considered politically unacceptable. In 2009 though, geo-engineering, intentional large-scale manipulation of the climate, is poised to enter mainstream climate policy discussions. High-risk projects are now gaining a shocking respectability as panic rises over climate change. They include polluting the upper atmosphere with sulphur nanoparticles to refl ect sunlight back to space or changing the chemistry of the ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide. Former climate change sceptics such as Newt Gingrich and several right wing think tanks have started to promote geo-engineering as a painless quick-fix which would bypass the need for emission reductions. This summer, the UK Royal Society will publish a report purporting to weed out the good geo-engineering schemes from the bad. Unfortunately, it will be written mainly by geo-engineering enthusiasts. Despite a global moratorium on one ocean geo-engineering technique, fertilising the ocean to grow CO2 gobbling plankton, India may launch a pilot scheme this year and private geo-engineering company Climos threatens to take to the seas in 2009 or early 2010. 

2) GM insects 

If the thought of GM pollen spreading on the breeze worries you, then watch out – the latest GM products have wings! In 2009, Oxford based Oxitec intends to become the first company to sell genetically modified insects for large scale release. Oxitec has developed a GM pink bollworm (moth larvae) that it claims will mate with natural bollworms (a cotton pest) and render them sterile. However, Oxitec’s plans don’t stop there. This also looks to be the year when it will proceed with a large scale trial release of genetically modified mosquitos also intended to spread sterility in wild populations. Oxitec, which received a $5m grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, claims the technology will help wipe out dengue fever which is on the rise as climate change bites. The ‘terminator mosquitos’ were due to be released on Pulau Ketam island, which lies off the coast of Malaysia, but local Chinese fishermen raised concerns that they are being used as a test bed. Further experiments of this type have been planned for Mexico and India. Biosafety experts warn that the genes may spread, the sterility plan may fail and the product may contravene a global moratorium on terminator (sterility) technology. 

3) Synthetic biology 

Every few years a technology platform upgrades itself – handguns become machine guns and VHS becomes DVDs. Right now genetic engineering is in the process of reinventing itself as synthetic biology – an extreme form of genetic engineering that allows the genetic code of organisms to be built entirely from scratch. With more than a dozen synthetic biology companies aiming to put products on the market in the next couple of years and major investment by the likes of BP, Du Pont, Chevron and Goodyear, 2009 may be the year the public notices a multibillion artificial life industry is now well established. In particular, expect front page headlines this year if genome tycoon J Craig Venter succeeds in bringing to life the world’s first entirely synthetic bacterial species, dubbed Synthia. He has already applied for patents on a method that he claims will make millions of such synthetic species every day – a prospect that dwarfs the current trickle of GM organisms and may overwhelm our inadequate GMO laws. 

4) Nano-regulation 

If you received new socks or cosmetics this Christmas, there is a good chance you might already be wearing nanoparticles – tiny engineered lumps of matter with unusual industrial properties. Although nanoparticles have been used unlabelled and untested in hundreds of consumer products for several years now, governments and consumer watchdogs are now finally cottoning on to the new toxicity problems that these novel materials may pose. In September, 70 governments, 12 intergovernmental organizations, and 39 nongovernmental organizations participated in the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety in Dakar, Senegal. They agreed producers should label nanomaterials in consumer products and that countries should have the right to refuse imports of nanoproducts. In November, the UK’s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution joined the growing chorus of concern about the lack of nanoregulation and the Austrian government called for a moratorium on food uses of nanotechnology. The coming year is likely to see increased efforts by trade unions and consumer groups to get some oversight of nano-risks. In May, the issue will go to the UN’s International Conference on Chemicals Management. The European Commission already accepts new labelling laws may be needed for nanotechnology products. 

5) Cellulosic biofuels

 After last year’s food price crisis you would be hard pressed to find anyone still arguing the case for turning food crops into ethanol. Instead the new orthodoxy among biofuel advocates is that a ‘second generation’ of biobased fuels (see this month’s cover story) will soon power our cars without affecting food. Using modified microbes or heat, companies such as Mascoma and Koskata are this year commercialising ‘cellulosic biofuels’, turning cellulose sugars (found in the woody part of plants and trees) into vehicle fuel. By switching from food crops towards wood and ‘agricultural waste’ (such as corn stalks) they hope to sidestep the ‘food vs fuel’ debate. If it works, expect to see a massive corporate grab on plant matter and a new debate over biomass. Forest communities will oppose the increased forest destruction associated with cellulose production for fuels. Sustainable agriculture advocates will argue that removing corn stalks from fields will deplete soils and increase fertiliser use and GM campaigners will express alarm at the threat of powerful modified microbes escaping. 

6) Biochar 

Take wood, turn it into charcoal and then bury it in the soil – that’s the basic technique behind  biochar, sometimes referred to as agrichar. Its promoters claim this technology can deliver a triple whammy of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, improving soil fertility and increasing crop yields. In the last three years, a rash of biochar start-up companies has emerged – led by eco businessmen such as organic pioneer Craig Sams of Green & Blacks or carbon offsetting pioneer Dan Morrell of Future Forests. Advocates talk of planting a billion hectares of fast growing plantations to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and bury it in soils, speeding up the carbon cycle and maybe earning carbon credits in the process. Look for opposition from forest activists. They wonder where the research is that shows biochar does actually improve all the different kinds of soils there are, as opposed to the most arid ones, and see the biochar associated rapid expansion of monoculture plantations as a threat to stressed forest ecosystems and to communities. 

7) Spaceflight

Expect to hear a lot about spacecraft in 2009 – not from the boffins at NASA but from the brand new space tourism industry. In early 2010, Virgin Galactic hopes to start the first regular commercial flights to outer space and will be running tests of its Spaceship Two rocket throughout 2009 with celebrity passengers on board. Billionaire Virgin boss Richard Branson is locked in competition with at least two other commercial companies – SpaceX and Rocketplane Global which hope to kick off a multi-billion pound commercial space industry. As publicity ramps up, Virgin Galactic is preparing itself for criticism from the same climate campaigners opposing regular air travel. Virgin Galactic public relations folks claim that a trip to the edge of space is less carbon intensive than a London-New York air flight and they are offering to run atmospheric experiments from their spacecraft to help understand climate change better. An early passenger will be controversial ecologist James Lovelock who sees no problem in blessing the new spaceflight industry just as he has given his approval to the nuclear industry and to geo-engineering. The first flights will run out of the Mojave desert and later Spaceport America in New Mexico but Virgin Galactic is also considering building a Spaceport Scotland at RAF Lossiemouth for flights from 2013. After recent UK campaigns against airport expansion, maybe we’ll soon see spaceport campaigners locked on to launchpads too? 

8) Data centres

If you think reaching outer space increases carbon emissions, consider the climate costs of accessing virtual space. According to one set of calculations, every search query carried out on the internet uses 11 watt hours of energy – the equivalent of releasing seven grams of carbon. Behind the seemingly weightless world of websites and social networking, huge data processing warehouses suck up energy to run rows of computer servers and whirring cooling fans. Such datacentres are proliferating fast. Management consultancy McKinsey estimates that by 2050, data centres will be responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the airline industry, as the digitalisation of medical records, libraries and genomic databases swells the global need for switched on servers. Some data centre users are stepping up to the energy challenge. Google aims to be powering their so-called ‘googlefarms’ with renewable energy and is investing accordingly but there may be other problems to tackle. Like e-waste. As the global data centre boom gets underway, the need for cheap, upgradable server equipment – chips, boards and plastic casings – will become a major new source of electronic waste, releasing toxic chemicals in both assembly and disposal. In the past three years, environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition have had major successes forcing home PC makers to green their products. In 2009 it may be time to take on Google, Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo and Facebook too. 

9) Obama’s chief technology officer

With the advent of a new commander in chief, the United States is also being promised a new czar for all matters technological – a ‘chief technology officer’. Who the geek-in-chief might be has set the technology press alight with speculation. Will it be Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google? (Apparently not.) Might it be Bill Gates recently retired from Microsoft? (We certainly hope not.) How about software hero Bill Joy, famous for raising concerns about nanotech, genetic engineering and robotics? (That would be interesting). Why this matters is that it signals that Obama intends to put the interests of the technology sector at the heart of his new administration complete with a corporate inspired job title. For those hoping this administration might bring back the much missed Office of Technology Assessment or bring some participatory democracy to technology policy, there is likely to be disappointment. The new chief geek may carry out some socially useful tasks such as fending off the monopolisation of the internet and reforming patent law to make room for open source systems. On the fundamentals of who controls and assesses new technologies however, all signs are that corporations and the military will hand over none of that power. Expect howls of protest when whoever it is cashes in their personal technology stock options tax-free under a little-known loophole and further howls when the fearless new geek leader turns out to hold patents, maintains corporate ties or other conflicts of interest. 

Written for The Ecologist – November 2008 

Don’t be fooled by The Cloud – the world of the internet seems weightless, but it is leaving an increasingly heavy footprint behind it 

Do you know where your email is stored and what it costs the environment to store it there? For millions of people who use web-based email services, these are difficult questions to answer. A webmail message is one of those seemingly intangible objects stored ‘somewhere else’ on the internet. That somewhere is increasingly known as ‘The Cloud’. 

The Cloud is geek shorthand for the virtual place where you search the web, watch YouTube videos, make Facebook friends or carry out internet banking. Although we access all of these virtual services via our desktops, some other computer at the other end of the internet is actually doing the heavy lifting of assembling data into cat videos or loveletters or mortgage payments. Calling this vague collection of ‘other’ computers a ‘cloud’ evokes a vaporous world of weightless websites, but that would be misleading. In truth, The Cloud consists of dataprocessing warehouses the size of football fields, strung together by fat cables and inside which air-conditioning fans cool rows of computing servers 24 hours a day. Far from being weightless, the expanding digital cloud is really an enormous necklace of steel, silicon and concrete. 

The Cloud consists of dataprocessing warehouses the size of football fields, strung together by fat cables and inside which air-conditioning fans cool rows of computing servers 24 hours a day. Far from being weightless, the expanding digital cloud is really an enormous necklace of steel, silicon and concrete. 

That necklace is now growing heavy. As the demand for online services skyrockets, a global building bonanza is underway. Governments from Malaysia to Iceland are touting for data centre contracts. Facebook is currently investing $200 million in data centres. Microsoft is investing $500 million per new data centre, while Google is spending $600 million on each new facility, having spent an astonishing $2.4 billion on data centres in 2007 alone. Every one of these data centres is a serious energy hog. 

According to San Francisco power utility PG&E, the demand for power by data centres in its region rocketed from 70 megawatts to 500 megawatts in just a year and a half. Carrying out a single search query on Google’s servers is estimated to use as many as 11 watt-hours of energy – equivalent to lighting a compact fluorescent light bulb for one hour.  By one reckoning, each search emits just under 7g of C0 2.If that’s right then the 113 billion internet searches performed last year emitted more greenhouse gases than the economy of Eritrea, even before accounting the climate cost of buying boots on eBay or watching cute kittens on YouTube. According to a recent study by McKinsey & Company, data centres currently account for 0.3 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050 they are expected to outdo air travel in their contribution to climate change. 

All of that also burns cash, of course, and so the scramble is on to reduce power costs. New data centres are being sited next to icy rivers or in chilly countries, in the hope of cutting down on aircon. Google is investing in solar, wind and other renewables to defray a $2 million electricity bill. It is even looking to push The Cloud out to sea: in the past few months it has emerged that Google has designs on a fleet of floating data centres that would use the cold waves to produce energy and cool the computers. 

Beyond energy and carbon costs, however, The Cloud may also turn out to have a toxic lining. Managing electronic waste (e-waste) is a problem that plagues all computer-users, but is especially acute for data centres aggregating thousands of electronics in one location. Google is estimated to run about half a million data servers built in-house from the cheapest possible components. A single upgrade of this data centre hardware could liberate thousands of tonnes of e-waste, particularly in circuit boards. According to the US-based Computer TakeBack Campaign, thousands of chemicals are used in the production of electronics, including heavy metals and hazardous materials such as PVC. Their production and disposal often exposes workers in poor communities and prisons to environmental and reproductive toxins. Massive aircon systems for data centres can also employ toxic coolants. Unfortunately, as the data centre industry moves offshore (literally in Google’s case) to chillier and cheaper locations, keeping a watchful eye on The Cloud may prove ever more difficult.

If there is a video gamer in your life, chances are that you have heard of Spore, the latest creation from the super successful inventor of ‘The Sims’.

Spore lets players digitally design and evolve new organisms ranging from single-celled microbes to intergalactic aliens. In the game, the user can genetically alter their digital life-form, adding body parts one click at a time. The user-created organisms are simultaneously released into the game-worlds of thousands of other players, creating complex and surprising ecosystems to navigate. Spore organisms can be printed on to a t-shirt, mailed to you as plastic figurines or uploaded to ‘Sporepedia’, an online gallery where fans share their custom-made life-forms for remixing. Bored with editing digital music and digital video, the next nerd frontier is digital life.

As would-be intelligent designers experiment with Spore, the line between remixing digital and biological life is becoming perilously thin. Thanks to the new tools of synthetic biology, Spore fans wanting to dabble in a more organic medium can already do so from the comfort of their laptops. At www.biobricks.org, you can choose among thousands of custom-designed genetic sequences (known as ‘standard biological parts’) that can be subsequently posted to you as real DNA. One startup, Ginkgo BioWorks of Boston, will soon be offering kits of DNA stuck to paper that enable simple genetic engineering at home. Drop the paper in a test tube with some nutrients and bacteria. Chill it in the fridge and then warm it against your computer screen. Presto! Your bacteria are genetically altered to glow red or smell like bananas.No lab bench or white coat in sight.

Just as video production moved from a niche profession requiring expensive equipment to today’s universe of amateur YouTube clips, so a new generation of synthetic biologists is working to take the elite science of genetic engineering away from Monsanto and give it to the masses as a craft.
They call this DIY genetic engineering ‘garage biology’ or ‘biohacking’. In Boston and San Francisco, amateur biohacking clubs are beginning to form whose aim is to replicate the success of the computer industry in kick-starting an industrial revolution by bringing technology into the home.

Synthetic biologist Drew Endy of Stanford University imagines that within a few years there will be a whole new class of life-form designers working remotely from their laptops – emailing their designs to labs just as graphic designers send digital files for printing. Endy runs an annual competition in which hundreds of students and teenagers compete to create the ‘coolest’ life-form out of standard parts. Right now they ‘hack’ bacteria and yeast to take photos or secrete biofuels. Within five years, biohacking plants and animals this way will be more common.

Futurist Freeman Dyson argues that the coming outpouring of new synthetic life-forms designed by hobbyist amateurs may eventually outnumber those species developed through natural evolution, with engineered life rapidly becoming the norm.

Dyson may be overstating things, but there is certainly a big shift under way that even activists and regulators have yet to comprehend. Despite millions of acres of genetically modifi ed corn and soya, the actual number of new species developed through genetic engineering has so far been a tiny trickle compared to the fl ood of engineered species our ecosystems may be about to experience. Existing biosafety regulations are already barely able to monitor the health and environmental impacts of that trickle, let alone the results of amateur biohacking carried out in kitchens, bathrooms, garages and via the internet. Unlike computing, the haphazard results of this biological programming will be living, self-replicating organisms.

Unfortunately, the digital world doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of control solutions. If the DIY organisms of Spore should go awry there is always the option of pulling the plug and rebooting the computer. Out here in the real world, that option doesn’t look so attractive.

Mapmaking and conquest has a disturbingly close history. As indigenous people learned, the innocuous mapmaker may be followed by weapons, property claims and exploitation. So too for the recent rash of science projects using mapping.

The mapping of the human genome was accompanied by a massive patent grab on human genes. By mapping online social networks, internet marketers exploit new markets, while Big Pharma waits hungrily for new maps of the brain to offer opportunities to sell mood, attention, sleep and memory drugs.

The Human Microbiome Project is a $115 million attempt to map genetically all the microbes (bacteria, yeast and other single-celled critters) that inhabit the human body. Initial studies suggest our skin is crawling with a trillion microbes. Our mouths sustain 700 different microspecies, 10 billion in every gob of spit. The human gut harbours 100 trillion micro-organisms. Microbes outnumber the cells of the body 10 to one.

What interests microbial mapmakers is that our resident microbes (our so-called ‘microbiome’) are not getting a free ride. The body employs microbes to break down food, ward off invaders and boost immunity. Researchers estimate 10 per cent of all the body’s chemicals are produced by microbes. Over history, microbes have swapped genes with the body and become inheritable mitochondria in its cells. Most worrying are suggestions that our microbial passengers help control our behaviour. One tiny parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, secretes chemicals that make mice fatally attracted to cats. It is controversially suggested the same bug also brings on human behaviour patterns such as promiscuity and violence.

Waiting in the wings are a handful of business plans to exploit knowledge of the human microbiome, from the probiotic yoghurt industry to biotech companies like Florida-based Oragenics, which is going through FDA approval for genetically engineered bacteria it claims will out-compete the species that cause tooth decay. It calls this approach ‘replacement therapy’ – replacing an existing microbiome with a new engineered one. Leading researchers in the human microbiome project have filed a patent on a method they claim could make fat people skinny (or vice versa) by replacing the energy-efficient microbes resident in obese people with the more sluggish microbes found in leaner folks.

Most significant is the emerging evidence that everyone has a different set of microbes – a microbiomic fingerprint. Pharmaceutical companies and food companies would like to sell you drugs and foods perfectly matched to your own personal bacteria. Forensics experts would like to find out where you have been and with whom by examining the microbes you breathed in or left behind.

Most intriguing, because microbial populations in the air may differ by geographical location, a breath sample may reveal whether you have been taking the mountain air in Northern California or Northern Afghanistan. Instead, mapping and controlling microbes may become interchangeable with tools mapping and controlling human populations.

Jim Thomas is a research programme manager and writer with ETC group (www.etcgroup.org)

As to global annihilation, I’m stumped. Most of us wouldn’t recognise a strangelet if it casually devoured us in the street

There’s a slim chance – about one in 50 million – that nobody will ever read this article. A physics experiment taking place under the French-Swiss border could theoretically destroy the world first. In late May 2008, the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest machine, is expected to begin accelerating single atoms along a 27km-long doughnut-shaped tunnel. Those atoms will then be smashed together at almost the speed of light. The aim is to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang – albeit under European countryside rather than in the empty nothingness of space.

CERN, The European Organization for Nuclear Research, which has built this giant doughnut, hopes its atom-smasher will provide glimpses of the elusive particles that make up atoms – but that might not be all. In his gloomy book, Our Final Hour, Sir Martin Rees, president of the UK’s Royal Society, offers three scenarios by which atom-smashing experiments could go badly awry. They might form tiny black holes or could destabilise empty space. They might also create theoretical quantum objects called ‘strangelets’ able to ‘transform the entire planet Earth into an inert, hyperdense sphere about 100m across’. Yikes.

Before anyone presses the panic button, however, a CERN report that weighs the chances of planetary annihilation has concluded they are too low to worry about. Fifty million to one, in fact. Even Rees admits the black holes don’t keep him awake at night. He’s a bit less sanguine about strangelets.

Nonetheless, the Large Hadron experiment raises stark questions about our relationship to technology in general. Who decides what level of technological risk is acceptable when total annihilation may be the outcome? It’s in the interests of CERN physicists to downplay the risk; the rest of us have no say. In April, Walter W. Wagner, an ex-nuclear safety officer from Hawaii, filed a private US lawsuit to restrain the Large Hadron Collider from coming online. His first hearing in mid-June might prove a bit late.

What if we did have a say? If there were a referendum on whether CERN should smash atoms or not? I suspect the public might at least ask some questions the official report overlooked. For example, should the Large Hadron Collider be gobbling up 120MW of power at a time when society needs to cut back global energy-use? This figure does not take into account the energy required for the new global computing grid that will process data from the collider. The public might question the wisdom of spending $10 billion of public funds to glimpse esoteric particles. That amount might be enough to deliver universal primary education.

As to global annihilation, I’m stumped. Most of us, after all, are not high-energy physicists and wouldn’t recognise a strangelet if it casually devoured us in the street.

That points to a bigger tragedy: that we no longer understand our technologies. Somehow we have reached the point where decisions that may weigh on our future are only intelligible to a tiny elite of scientific experts. The black holes we should worry about aren’t tiny holes in the fabric of space and time, but the yawning vacuums in our democracies over how to govern complex technology.

Jim Thomas is a research programme manager and writer with ETC group (www.etcgroup.org)

For ‘the soils’ as they are affectionately known in the UK, drawing a line against nano is a sensible and timely move. Nanotechnology used to be just a science fiction staple for the star trek types but today its a multi-billion dollar industry busily inserting tiny nanoparticles (that is particles billionths of a metre in size) into everyday items such as cosmetics, fabrics, pesticides, even foods. According to the U.S.-based Woodrow Wilson International Center, there are over 500 manufacturer-identified consumer products on the market that contain nanomaterials. A 2007 survey by the European Food Safety Authority, which has just begun wrestling with the question of regulating nanotech, estimates there are at least 70 nanotech food-related applications already on the market and most major food and beverage corporations are investing in nanotech R&D. The use of nanotech in cosmetics and clothing is even more widespread. Meanwhile there is a paucity of studies on the health, safety and environmental impacts of nano-scale materials, no nano-specific regulations and real worries about the unusual toxicity of small particles.

“There should be no place for nanoparticles in health and beauty products or food.” explains the Soil Associations Gundula Azeez, who also serves on an official British standards body for Nanotechnology “We are deeply concerned at the government’s failure to follow scientific advice and regulate products. There should be an immediate freeze on the commercial release of nanomaterials until there is a sound body of scientific research into all the health impacts. As we saw with GM, the government is ignoring the initial indications of risk and giving the benefit of the doubt to commercial interest rather than the protection of human health.”

Lest anyone should think this is a nano-storm-in-a-teacup its worth noting that the Soil Association has a good pedigree in getting there before consumer concern. At a time when ‘the Soils’ were led by legendary economist EF Schumacher (the author of ‘Small is Beautiful’) it co-founded of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) which now oversees global organic rules. In 1967 they published the world’s first organic standard explicitly banning pesticides, antibiotics and other chemicals from organic farming. In 1983 they banned animal protein from animal feed 3 years before the first case of BSE (mad cow disease) was discovered in Britain. In 1994 they banned GM crops from food and farming. In the wake of the Soil Association’s ‘no-nano’ decision other organic agriculture groups in North America and Europe are now examining whether to also ban nanomaterials from their organic standards, too.

The Soil Association ban comes in the same month that the UK’s largest consumer association, Which?, will launch its campaign to protect the public from risky nanomaterials in consumer products, following the lead of the US Consumer’s Union which has called for mandatory labeling, regulatory oversight and increased funding for risk-related research. It also follows growing annoyance in civil society that repeated warnings over nanotech safety risks are being ignored by nano-boosting governments. In mid-2007 over 40 civil society groups endorsed a statement of principles calling for precautionary action, manufacturer liability and new nano-specific regulations for nano-products. To date no government has enacted legislation to assess the safety or societal impacts of nanomaterials.

Indeed as with genetically modified foods when they first hit the market, manufacturers are not even required to disclose the presence of nano-size materials so it’s virtually impossible to make fully informed choices. In its newly published standard the Soil Association bans the use of human-made nanomaterials whose basic particle size is less than 125nm and whose mean particle size is less than 200nm. Thats incredibly tiny – smaller than the smallest known microbes and certainly far too small for any shopper to happen to notice. Organic therefore may become a ‘safe haven’ for those who’d rather not gamble on this risky technology in their fruit juices and face creams – just as it did with GMO’s. The Soil Association certification mark already found on over 80% of organic products is now effectively the world’s first nano-free symbol but it won’t be the last.

These days genetic engineering, the standard practice of transferring a piece of DNA from one organism to another, is a routine, plodding and rather old-fashioned lab technique. There are several steps involved – ranging from identifying suitable DNA, cutting it out of its host organism, transforming it into a circular strand of DNA (a plasmid) and then somehow lodging it in the genome of the organism you intend to alter using a virus or a gene gun method. For some years synthetic biology has promised to speed up the front end of that process (the acquiring DNA bit) since it’s now possible to specify on the Internet exactly what DNA you want. Within a fortnight of clicking the order button, DNA synthesis foundries such as GENEART or Blue Heron can cheaply provide a custom-made plasmid ready for genetic engineering.

At present most synthetic biologists engineer their synthetic DNA into trusty lab microbes such as E. coli or yeast in order to see if their designer gene sequences “work.” Consider a simplistic computing analogy – the E. coli genome is the equivalent of an operating system such as Windows or OSX and the circular engineered strand of synthetic DNA is a programme that the researcher hopes will carry out some task such as making a protein or altering behavior of the organism. Of course biology is much messier than computing but that over-simplified metaphor is nonetheless a basic conceit of synthetic biology. Venter’s quest to create a novel organism with a minimal genome ( which we call “Synthia”) is an attempt to create a stripped-down operating system that’s leaner and meaner than E. coli and on which synthetic DNA programmes could be implemented. Venter’s recently published portfolio of patent applications seeks to own this operating system and the method of adding extra synthetic DNA to it.

Surprisingly, however, Venter’s approach does away with genetic engineering altogether. Instead of constructing a plasmid and blasting it into the existing genome of a living organism, Venter and his colleagues will place the entire synthetic genome into a bacterial cell and make that cell “boot up.” Significantly, they have broken down the entire minimal genome into 101 short fragments of DNA or “gene cassettes.” Any one of these cassettes can be removed and replaced by a synthetically altered cassette or, indeed, extra synthetic cassettes could be added (so let’s say there might be 102 or 103 fragments rather than the original 101). The patent applications then describe a method by which all of those fragments are mixed in a reaction chamber and assemble themselves in one go into a complete genome. The inspiration for this miraculous assembly is a favourite bug of Venter’s – an almost un-killable microbe called Deinococcus radiodurans that is thought to be able to travel in outer space because it can survive radiation doses that are three to five thousand times the lethal dose for humans. Even though radiation bombardment shatters the genome of Deinococcus radiodurans into tiny fragments, the bug uses “repair proteins” (specialised enzymes) to piece its genome back together again. Like magic, it can be fully functioning again within 24 hours. Craig Venter has called D. radiodurans “the ultimate genome assembly machine”. E. coli, in fact, has similar repair proteins. By using these in a purified form along with a mix of other enzymes Venter’s patent applications suggests that it’s possible to swiftly assemble the fragments of the Synthia genome, including extra gene cassettes, into a complete genome. Theoretically, it’s a new, fast method of engineering new DNA into the genome.

For those familiar with Venter’s past work this “fragment-then-piece-back-together-again” approach might sound oddly familiar. It’s the principle behind his ‘shotgun sequencing’ method, which his private team at Celera used to decode the human genome faster than the U.S. government project. In shotgun sequencing the genome of an organism is blasted into small fragments that are rapidly sequenced in parallel and then reassembled inside a computer into one complete digital sequence.  In this new method, Venter is once again fragmenting the genome and re-assembling his fragments, this time in vitro – not in a computer – and with some extra DNA fragments deliberately thrown into the mix. The inventor of shotgun sequencing appears to be developing “shotgun synthesis” and his ambitions for this new technique are far from modest.

Not content with creating a faster method of genetic engineering, Venter is looking to emulate the robotic methods used in drug discovery to further speed up the creation of new life forms. In the patent applications his team describe a process that Venter calls “combinatorial genomics.” This precisely matches a process described in a Wired magazine interview several years ago:

“If you want to find the role of 100,000 genes, Venter says, the trick is to find a way of doing 100,000 experiments at once. All you would need that’s not already available is a synthetic genome, a sort of all-purpose template onto which you could attach any gene you wished, like inserting a blade onto a handle. You could then test the resulting concoction to see if it performed a specific vital task, such as metabolizing sugar or transporting energy. Using existing robotic technologies, you could do thousands of such experiments at once, in much the same way that a combinatorial chemist tests thousands of chemical compounds simultaneously to see if they have the desired effect on a target molecule. Most will not. But the ones that do can be investigated further. ‘I call it combinatorial genomics,’ Venter tells me. ‘It’s one of my better ideas if it works. In fact, it’s one of my better ideas if it doesn’t work.’”

In fact, the recently published patent applications claim that this process should enable the automatic production of not just thousands but “millions of different genomes” – a claim that Venter also made recently in this TED talk where he outlined his combinatorial genomics vision. Specifically, the patent applications describe a robotic system that rapidly assembles and tests synthetic genomes in a fast throughput model either by “installing” them into cells or by making them express themselves in a “cell-free environment… comprising the necessary transcriptional and translational machinery to express genes” – probably something similar to these microfluidic chips developed by David Kong of MIT which mix cellular contents in tiny silicon chambers.

If Craig Venter does indeed develop the capacity to create millions of new synthetic organisms per day he will also need a ready supply of thousands of new unexamined genes to test in his Synthia operating system. Here, too, his team is already way out in front. His Sorcerer II Expedition spent 2 years trawling the world’s oceans collecting organisms in seawater samples to be rapidly sequenced in the new field of metagenomics. Metagenomics takes the study of genomes to the level of entire ecosystems. Ignoring the messy boundaries of individual species, metagenomic sequencing faithfully records all the genes found at a particular location without trying to ascribe them to this, that, or another organism. In effect the whole genetic material of an ecosystem is presented as a soup. Geneticists can then comb through the gene sequences in this undifferentiated soup to identify genes with similar structures and properties.

Earlier this year Venter’s team announced they had so far identified 6.12 million new proteins uncovered from 7.7 million genetic sequences from the first phase of the Sorcerer II’s voyage. Within this wider dataset are hundreds of thousands of similar genes – photoreceptors, for example, that might be used to engineer synthetic organisms that convert sunlight to hydrogen.  Attempting to engineer those genes one at a time into an existing microbe would be a daunting challenge with conventional genetic engineering techniques, but with the “shotgun synthesis” and combinatorial genomics approach, such a challenge is – at least theoretically – more do-able. Venter hopes it may yield hundreds, maybe thousands of industrially useful proteins. Venter’s metagenomics prospecting doesn’t stop at sea, his Institute is also sampling airborne bacteria in downtown Manhattan and Venter half-jokes that he hopes to create  ”Whole Earth Gene Catalog” which sounds not unlike proposals Venter made to Google to make all the genes in the world Googlable. Indeed Venter’s ambitions don’t stop at Earth – rumours are that Venter has also talked of sampling bacteria from the edge of the atmosphere in the hope of finding DNA from outer space. In our report, Extreme Genetic Engineering, we joked that the ability to digitise and beam back life forms could create a new form of “star trek biopiracy.” Little did we realise how literally Craig Venter would boldly go there…

However, no sooner was the jamboree over than fresh news about a new initiative in California served as a sharp reminder of Syn Bio’s new corporate masters.

The Joint Bio Energy Institute (JBEI), announced yesterday, is a 125 million dollar collaboration between six Californian research labs. It will be headed up by Synthetic Biologist Jay Keasling. The JBEI will focus on synthetic biology and metabolic engineering work to develop new fuels. The six partners are the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia), the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the University of California (UC) campuses of Berkeley and Davis, and Stanford University.

What is notable is the agressively commercial language of the announcement in which Keasling, now styled as CEO, boasts “The DOE JBEI will be organized like a biotech startup company”, promising to “seek collaborations with companies that have relevant scientific and market capabilities in energy, agribusiness, and biotechnology.”

In addition to maintaining an Industry Partnership Program, the JBEI research will be guided by an Industry Advisory Board whose membership will come from key sectors, including feedstocks, enzymes, fuels production, biotechnology, genetics and chemistry.

Keasling further adds that “This organizational structure and culture is intended to ensure rapid commercialization of the DOE JBEI R&D,” – The message from these publically funded synthusiasts is clearly “open for business”.

At Synthetic Biology 3.0 there was some real concern amongst attendees about the parrallel proposed 500 million dollar deal being negotiated between the University of Berkeley in California and oil giant BP Amoco. BP who are setting up an Energy Biosciences Institute (along with CEO Keasling) are buying access and exclusive rights to Berkeley’s SynBio research and capabilities.

There is a strong Stop BP-Berkeley campaign which wants to do exactly what its name suggests (ie stop the deal). Curiously that wasn’t the message that had been carried to Zurich. Lawyer Stephen Maurer, who last year spearheaded the synthusiasts attempt at self governance, was this year lobbying for “a better deal for Berkeley”… entreating other concerned souls not to oppose the corporate takeover of academia but to lobby instead for a “better” (kinder, gentler?) corporate takeover of the academy.

The BP-Berkeley deal, the new Joint Bio Energy Institute, and also the recent job hop by John Melo of BP fuels to Amyris Biotech – are all extra strings tying the interests of the Syn Bio community ever closer to the interests of big business. It should be noted that in each of thse cases CEO Keasling plays a central role. The same man who claims to be developing Synthetic Biology to serve the worlds poor (via synthetic artemisinin) seems to be rather busy these days serving the fabulously rich.

If there was to be established, as one ethicist suggests, a Jedi priesthood of the synthusiasts, Tom Knight would certainly be among the spiritual elders. Today he was reminding his followers of the SynBio gospel: “Biology is modular,”he declared, elucidating a central tenet of the synbio belief system. “We can discover nature’s modular designs, modify them and use them.. we can create new modular designs.. make them more modular, force them to behave as modules.”

And then there’s abstraction. Knight suggests that only by breaking down the complexity of nature into abstracted parts (cells, genes, ribosomes, promoters,etc.) is re-engineering nature possible. By turning the incomprehensible thousands or millions of elements in a genome into a smaller set of slightly more comprehensible (if abstract) parts. biological engineers can start to focus on distinct sections of the puzzle. “We don’t have to cope with complexity that we’re not forced to cope with.”

That in itself is a telling statement on more than one level.

Scientists tend to narrowly practice some specialised part of their discipline (the part understandable to them) while choosing not to cope with the complexity of the society into which their technology will be introduced. But the real world problem is that the complexity has to be addressed somehow.

And that’s perhaps been a tension here at Syn Bio 3.0 — Most of the programme has been for the engineers (‘the cool’) who would rather focus down and get something practical achieved — as Tom Knight described it: “We are about creating sytems that are different from what occurs in the natural world.” For them discussion about the wider complexity of social impacts (by ‘the concerned’) threatens to distract from the task at hand. George Church expressed this yesterday when he said that he wouldn’t be a very good engineer if he spent all his time trying to do societal outreach. More argument for inviting in (and listening to) civil society to share the load.

On a lighter note: our not very scientific poster disappeared today (we hope it went to a happy home). We were told that some people had posted notes requesting copies and those unfortunately disappeared with the poster. We’ll have it in downloadable format on our website in the next couple of days — meanwhile, you can catch a photo of it at Nature’s blog here.