New Life?

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Some 40 years ago, we developed a strain of microbes that converted ammonia to nitrogenous gases.  The goal was to find a way to augment a waste treatment system’s ability to purify the water.  Oh, we found uses for it at many facilities.  Not the least of which were seasonal facilities that handled poultry wastes.  (These facilities ramped up to handle the demand for turkeys around Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the ambient temperatures were pretty low.  That meant the normal capabilities of a system to biologically remove ammonia were greatly diminished.)

The granting of our patent (USPTO 4290891) followed the tremendous effort General Electric (GE) effected to get Dr. Chakrabary’s critical first patent on a genetically engineered microbe (Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 1980)  approved.  And, we were almost immediately attacked by a prominent soil scientist, Dr. Martin Alexander, from Cornell.     He was worried that we would alter the natural order of the world.

Dr. Alexander feared that all the output from the microbes that were critical in the conversion of nitrogen to ammonia (via a process called nitrogen fixation) would be for naught.  Because our microbes would overtake the world.  (We won’t waste more than one second mentioning that it should have been obvious that Jeremy Rifkin, who I personally considered a charter member of “the sky is falling” society back then, was against our efforts, too.  And, in that same breath, let me also remind you that there is ZERO compelling evidence that genetically modified organisms [GMO] present health hazards for humans.)

Dr. Alexander  refused to believe that we had found a method to make it difficult for our microbes to duplicate in the wild.  Even though that would have meant our customers could buy our product once- and never purchase the product again.   (Our processes meant the microbes would be viable for about 10 days in the wild- and then, in the ultimate razor blade fashion, you had to purchase more from us.)

Well, now, there is a much more sophisticated method to preclude genetically microbes from growing in the wild.  The microbes require synthetic amino acids for growth that are lacking in the natural world.  Obviously, industry is happy (you must buy THEIR razor blades) and folks like Rifkin will lack even more standing to attack these products.

The research has been conducted under the auspices of two groups- Dr. George Church (Harvard University) and Dr. Farren Isaacs (Yale)-  who, himself, started his research under the tutelage of Dr. Church.  Each group published an article in the same issue of Nature (Church’s group and Isaacs’ group). And, they (both of them)have created their own firm, EnEvolv, to market the results of their research.

Drs. Church and Isaacs development

In addition to their fastidious nutritional requirements, the microbes are also resistant to viri (which means they are more “robust’).  This resistance would also have provided them a significant competitive advantage in nature- if they did not require those synthetic amino acids for growth.

By the way, these new developments are termed GRO, genetically recoded organisms, because the codons (which are three RNA or DNA nucleotides that specify an amino acid or a stop signal in protein synthesis) in an entire section of the genome have been replaced by another.  In this case, the codons rely upon those synthetic amino acids, and cannot function without their being fed to the microbes to afford their growth.

The researchers hope to progress their developments to the point that it won’t be just one codon that has been replaced- but seven.

 

 

 

 

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