Friday, April 24, 2015

Would you eat transgenic food?

Many readers will immediately respond to the title of this post with a resounding "NO".

Don't be so hasty!

Looking close to home, we find that our own bodies contain many foreign genes.  It is estimated that around 8% of the human genome consists of fragments of endogenous retroviruses - about 100,000 of them.  Not all of these fragments are "junk" (a term the popular press is rather keen on).  A number of viral genes have been co-opted for our own purposes, in gene regulation, production of transfer RNA and ribosomal RNA.  One viral gene is critical to the formation of the placenta.  

On this basis, I'm not too surprised to read a piece of recent research* that shows that some of our vegetable crops are naturally transgenic.  Cultivated sweet potatoes contain the transfer DNA sequences from a bacterium called Agrobacterium.  This genus naturally infects the roots of certain plants, causing a nodule or hairy roots.  This T-DNA is not present in the wild type sweet potatoes, implying that one or more traits carried on this piece of DNA were selected for during the domestication of the sweet potato.

The authors of the paper point out that sweet potatoes have been consumed for millennia, and that this "may change the paradigm governing the “unnatural” status of transgenic crops."

If we look further, in my opinion, it is almost certain that we will find other bacterial or viral genes in our fruits and vegetables.


* The article is technical, but you can find it online

The genome of cultivated sweet potato contains Agrobacterium T-DNAs with expressed genes: An example of a naturally transgenic food crop

www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1419685112 

Sunday, April 12, 2015

On sugar, sucrose, fructose. Lets get the terminology right!


The latest media blast of anti-sugar material again highlights the inaccuracy or lack of clarity in reporting these sorts of stories. Few interviewers are clear on the sugar/fructose/glucose ie sugar chemistry picture and let the interviewee swap from talking about sugar to fructose and back to sugar again without realising that there is a need for clarity.
High Fructose Corn Syrup 
Can we all, please, tell everyone we know, that New Zealand food manufacturers use sugar ie sucrose to sweeten foods, not, that is NOT High Fructose Corn Syrup. HFCS, the source of much of the fructose in US diets is largely used to sweeten 'sugary drinks’ there, as it is a cheaper option. In this country, HFCS is used as a texture modifier in very small quantities because it is a relatively expensive option.
Let’s get this clear!