The release of genetically modified organisms into the environment threatens genetic diversity, which is essential for global food security. And a lack of genetic diversity in agriculture, says Greenpeace, can already be linked to many of the major crop epidemics in human history. (Media credit/Punch Stock)

Genetically modified organisms are those that have been altered by scientists to include genes from other organisms (known as transgenes) that may impart specific benefits. For instance, crop seeds that have added genes which resist the effects of herbicides can allow farmers to spray their fields liberally with herbicides to kill undesired weeds without the fear of killing their marketable crop along with them.

Genetic pollution is the release into the natural environment of these altered genes, creating the risk that they might breed with wild plants or animals and spread out uncontrollably. Reports author Jeremy Rifkin in his landmark 1998 book, The Biotech Century: “Some of those releases…could wreak havoc with the planet’s biosphere, spreading destabilizing and even deadly genetic pollution across the world.”

To follow through on the previous crop seed example: If herbicide-resistant, genetically engineered crops were to breed with their wild cousins, it could lead to the creation of super-weeds undeterred by control efforts. The weeds could, in turn, edge out native species and drive them to extinction, causing an overall loss of genetic diversity. According to Greenpeace, crop genetic diversity is “essential for global food security” and a lack of it can be linked to many of the major crop epidemics in human history, including the Southern corn leaf blight in the U.S. in 1970. They quote noted botanist Jack Harlan who said that genetic diversity is all that “stands between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we can not imagine.”

To track the growing problem of genetic pollution, Greenpeace International, along with GeneWatch UK, launched the GM Contamination Register in 2005 (the “GM” stands for Genetic Modification). This free online database details publicly documented incidents of contamination arising from the intentional or accidental release of genetically modified organisms into the environment as well as any accompanying negative agricultural side effects. Individuals, public interest groups and governments make use of the register to see where, when and how contamination has occurred. So far in 2011 alone more than a dozen cases of contamination—from Australia, Asia, Europe and the U.S.—have been reported in the register.

Gene pollution as it pertains to crops is only part of the concern. A Canadian company, AquaBounty, is seeking approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to sell genetically modified Atlantic salmon in the U.S. These fish have a growth hormone gene from Chinook salmon (native to the North Pacific) and an anti-freeze protein gene from another fish, the ocean pout (native to the Northwest Atlantic). The resulting transgenic salmon produce growth hormones all year long—not just during the warmer months like other fish—and as such reach maturity faster than their non-genetically modified counterparts.

“There are concerns about the impact of GM salmon on wild salmon should it escape into rivers or the Atlantic ocean, because it could out-compete wild salmon for food, or breed with them producing offspring that may be less fit to survive,” reports GeneWatch UK. “This could have serious negative effects on declining or endangered wild salmon populations.”

CONTACTS: GeneWatch UK, www.genewatch.org; Greenpeace International, www.greenpeace.org/international; GM Contamination Register, www.gmcontaminationregister.org; AquaBounty, www.aquabounty.com.

A gene that can cause congenital heart defects has been identified by a team of scientists, including a group from Princeton University. Authors on the paper included, from left, Rebecca Burdine, a Princeton molecular biology professor, and graduate students Jason McSheene and Kari Baker Lenhart. The team made the discovery by studying the embryos of zebrafish. Princeton University (Brian Wilson/Priceton University)

Researchers at Princeton University have found a gene that can cause congenital heart defects, a discovery that could one day lead to new treatments for those who may otherwise die suddenly.

Princeton researchers focused on identifying and studying the gene in zebrafish embryos, and the team’s work expanded to include collaborations with other groups studying the genetics of mice and people.

“This work really showcases the use of collaborative science and multiple model systems to better understand human disease,” said Rebecca Burdine, an assistant professor of molecular biology at Princeton who led her team.

The newly discovered gene, called CCDC40 (for “coiled coil domain containing protein 40″), controls right-to-left patterning as tissues develop, a critical factor in the configuration and effectiveness of organs. Scientists found the gene by zeroing in on zebrafish and mice in which the placement, and sometimes the internal structure, of organs is disrupted or reversed. While these so-called “left-right patterning” defects occur very rarely in zebrafish and mice, they occur at high frequency in the animals with mutated CCDC40 genes. Their study was published online in Nature Genetics on Dec. 5. A separate paper by another group identifying a sister gene, CCDC39, based on studies of genes in sheepdogs, appears in the same edition of the science journal.

“We used the strengths of different model organisms to gain an understanding of how a novel protein, produced by this new gene, functions,” said Irene Zohn, who led a research group studying mice genetics at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and is one of the first authors on the CCDC40 study with Burdine’s group. A third group, led by physician Heymut Omran and based at University Hospital in Freiburg, Germany, rounded out the team, with other individual participants located elsewhere. “These findings would not have been possible without the collaborations between the three groups,” Zohn added.

The collaboration started several years ago when Zohn contacted Burdine, a renowned expert in the study of left-right patterning in animals. Developmental biologists such as Burdine investigate what factors contribute to patterns in vertebrates relating to symmetry and leading to where organs are placed in the spatial configuration of the body. In humans and many animals, for example, the heart is usually situated on the left side with the liver at its lower right. Flaws in left-right patterning can lead to congenital heart defects in humans.

It is estimated that one in 10,000 people have a condition known as situs inversus, when the left-to-right patterning in the body is switched. In most cases, there are no adverse consequences of this condition, but problems arise when perturbations in the patterning signals produce reversals within organs, including heart structures such as the aorta and pulmonary artery. In rare circumstances, the heart can be located on one side without any supporting structures around it such as arteries and veins. That condition can be fatal.

I know the robot revolution is becoming a played out meme on the internet these days, but that’s mostly because the world around us is actually becoming more and more automated. Our GPS units are learning about us as we drive. In February, the L train in New York started overnight operations with a fully computer-controlled conductor. Now, my day job as a scientist could be replaced soon by automated workstations.

A group at Aberystwyth University in the UK has developed a completely automated workstation, which is capable of developing scientific hypotheses and then designing future experiments to verify them, all without any intervention from scientists. Using this workstation, named “Adam,” the scientists discovered the genetic coding for an orphan enzyme than had no known parent gene. While this may not sound like quite an accomplishment, this is actually an impressive feat that would have been rather labor-intensive and time-consuming for the scientists to carry out by hand.

The workstation is basically a fully fleshed-out molecular biology laboratory. It’s controlled by four computers, and comes with centrifuges, spectrophotometers to measure cell growth, automated liquid handlers and freezers among many different tools. The workstation can carry out 1,000 experiments simultaneously, each lasting five days, while making measurements every thirty minutes on each sample. The software then compiles all of the data it collects, makes statistical inferences, and then designs future experiments, and again carries them out in an iterative process. The human scientists simply added laboratory consumables and removed waste — Adam carried out the rest of the work.

Science is no stranger to automation. The vast majority of drug discovery work is done on liquid handing robot. However, the vast majority of this work is just brute force. For example, in the case of drug discovery, each well of a 384 well plate is loaded with a slightly different version of a molecule to see which version has the most activity. The most promising candidates are selected (in a process called hit-picking), and then further developed. Adam performed a similar process, determining which of the 1,200 known coding regions in the yeast genome actually coded a certain gene. But whereas, in drug development, scientists try every version of a drug they can synthesize, Adam was able to intelligently select which avenues of development were the most promising, eventually determining that three separate genes actually coded together for the one final product.

Clearly a lot of human work went into developing the software and logic algorithms that controlled Adam, so scientists aren’t going to be replaced by robots anytime soon. Adam didn’t design himself, after all. However, work of this kind could accelerate scientific discovery and development. As computers become more powerful, we’ll be able to analyze larger and larger data sets, finding patterns that would otherwise be too difficult for the human mind to tease out. The work done by this group is pioneering, and could be changing the face of science as we know it.

With a a tornado of viral publicity over its pre-released Creature Creator and a hurricane of backlash about walking phalli and borderline copy-right infringement by way of an Elmo with antlers and floating X-wings, “Spore” needs very little press.

What the National Geographic Channel set out to do instead, is inform. With “Spore’s” highly anticipated release September 7, the National Geographic Channel will be releasing a companion documentary called, “How to Build a Better Being.” Which delves deeper into the development of the game’s core mechanics and what they have to do with genetic research and bioengineering.

Will Wright has revolutionized the gaming world once again. A man with big ideas, and in partnership with Electronic Arts, they have made a galaxy-wide impact with his newest multi-genre, massive, single-player game. Users are put forth to evolve their own creature from its origins as a single-celled organism to a space faring civilization, with plenty of room for evolution in between.

“One of my goals for this whole thing has been to give somebody an awe-inspiring global view of reality, almost like a drug-induced epiphany with a computer. The kind of, ‘Oh, man, what if we were a molecule inside of a galaxy?’ type thing,” Will Wright said, explaining the scope of Spore.

A precursor to the full game came out this summer called “Spore: Creature Creator,” which allowed users to custom create a simulated organism and raise it to their every unique specification. Which in turned spawned some of the weirdest, most original creatures ever to grace the Internet, and that’s saying something.

User-created videos began to spring up on video social-networks like YouTube. Some creations looked like dogs and cats, yet others had no discernible mouth or even head. In some cases, the creator of the creature was so skilled as to create accurate representations of a specific piece of male anatomy.

The Creature Creator prompted a backlash from a small group of “militant atheists,” and even garnered a full report pm CNN: “Scrolling through the database — past the three-legged sea horse, past the seven-eyed wildebeest and the half-motorcycle-half-pig — revealed something many users didn’t expect. Buried among the more wholesome attempts were two-legged dancing testicles, a ‘giant breast monster’ and a four-legged ‘phallic fornication machine,’ for starters.”

Yet beyond all the simple menus, cute creations, and potential for graphic beast on beast pornography, lies an even deeper story. The framework for a game about creation, life and ultimately playing host to an entire civilization might seem daunting, but Wright and his team had it all covered. Speaking to ZDNet Asia, he expanded on the foundation of Spore. “A lot of it was science, looking at science as a whole, and around the question of Astrobiology and SETI, and how we turned that into an interesting game experience where you look at the entire universe from a very different perspective.”

The National Geographic Channel then took that grand premise and made a documentary focusing more on the technological/biological side of the game. With the motto of “Think Again,” NGC interviewed Will Wright and leading biology scientists in exploring how genetically, we’re all connected.

Scheduled to appear on September 9, at 10 p.m., “How to Build a Better Bring” was written and directed by Ron Bowan, who produced and directed “National Geographic Explorer” episodes, “Python” and “Violent Volcano,” and is Executive Produced by Howard Swartz. The video will be released stand-alone, or it can be purchased with the “Spore: Galactic Edition.”

“It’s kind of a biologist’s dream to be able to design your own animal,” says marine biologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer Tierney Thys, “to pick and choose the traits of animal groups that you most enjoy … Oh my gosh, I love this.”