Genetic Engineering

• Three articles follow below

U.S. Buyback of Corn Seed Draws 77 Smaller Companies

By JILL CARROLL
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON -- The Agriculture Department said 77 small seed
companies have enrolled in a government buyback program for corn seed
inadvertently contaminated with a genetically modified variety not approved
for human use.

The companies produce less than 1% of all corn seed in the U.S. The
department said it didn't know how much StarLink-contaminated corn seed
each of the companies has found.

The department's buyback program, which was announced last month, is
expected to cost between $15 million and $20 million. Agriculture
Department spokesman Kevin Herglotz said the program was only for
smaller companies because larger ones already have testing and disposal
systems in place.

Mr. Herglotz said the Agriculture Department wants to make sure that all
StarLink corn is off the U.S. market, including the tiny amount produced by
smaller companies. He said it would be several more weeks before the
department knows how many companies signed up of the 281 eligible.

The Environmental Protection Agency has approved StarLink for use only in
animal feed because of concerns that it might cause allergic reactions in
humans. But the corn, which contains an insecticide, managed to make its
way into the human food supply last year, prompting widespread food
recalls.

Since then, StarLink's maker, Aventis SA of France, has pulled it from the
market. The company is reimbursing some farmers and others in the industry
for losses suffered when corn crops intended for human consumption
became contaminated with StarLink.

Monday, Aventis tried to bolster its argument that the government should
approve the use of StarLink corn at some level in humans' food, since it is
nearly impossible to eradicate it from the food supply. The company
submitted tests to the EPA showing, it said, that corn products made from
100% StarLink corn -- a percentage not used in any product -- would
contain only tiny amounts of the material after processing, levels too low to
affect humans.

The EPA wouldn't comment on the Aventis submission. But Larry Bohlen,
director of health and environment programs for environmental-activist
group Friends of the Earth, said no level of StarLink should be allowed in
food since no one knows how harmful it might be.

E. Coli Adaptations

By GREG TOPPO

.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (March 12) - When Anne Tweed read about scientists in Oregon getting a monkey to glow in the dark, she thought her students ought to try it themselves.

So last January, the biology teacher at Eagle Crest High School in Aurora, Colo., sent away to Bio-Rad, a California biological supply company for $150 worth of the glow-in-the-dark gene that researchers at Oregon Health Science University had extracted from a jellyfish.

Her students carefully mixed up a broth of the gene and tried to get a few tins of E. Coli bacteria to accept it.

Three days later, the E. Coli cooperated.

''We genetically engineered the bacteria to have that glow-in-the-dark gene,'' she said.

New Super-Potato Glows Green to Ask for Water

Reuters

LONDON (Dec. 18) - Scientists have pioneered a genetically modified ''super potato'' that glows when it needs water, the head of the project said on Monday.

Researchers at Edinburgh University injected potato plants with a fluorescence gene borrowed from the luminous jellyfish aequorea victoria, which causes their leaves to glow green when dehydrated.

''This is an agriculture of the future,'' Professor Anthony Trewavas told Reuters. ''We were trying to design a way of monitoring the resources within a field and decided it was the plant itself which has that information.''

The potatoes are not intended to be eaten but would act as

''sentinels,'' planted beside the commercial crop to alert a farmer that the rest of his field needed watering.

The glow is barely visible to the naked eye but can be detected using a small hand-held device. Field trials are due to start next year though Trewavas predicted it could take some 20 years before the plants are commonly used. The technology could be extended to other fruit and vegetables, he added.