PDF> BioSolar Cells

From the Desk of Adam Zaretsky, Ph.D.
BioSolar Cells: Making a Field for Interpretation
Two Year Report and Proposal for Future Research
Overall Description of the project:
Arts and Engineering Towards a Solar Powered Species
Video of Public Presentation of the Two year Report:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LrJ2UBxM6E
What is BioSolar Cells:
“As oil, coal and gas become increasingly scarce, there is a growing
need for energy alternatives and alternatives to products made from
petroleum (such as plastics.) The sun supplies as much energy every
hour as the entire world population consumes in a year. Plants and
algae have refined systems for storing energy in their fibres and
nutrients. Increasing our understanding of that process should enable
us to produce energy ourselves or improve the conversion of sunlight
and make new products.” - Dr. Huub de Groot
The research program 'BioSolar Cells' (BSC) in the Netherlands addresses questions
of green energy and creation of sustainable biomass. The BSC program combines
natural and technological components to create solar collectors that supply fuel
rather than electricity. It is the function of involved artists to collaborating in the
development of these bio-solar collectors at the level of cultural production
metabolically effecting commentary in whole organisms and social perception
simultaneously. In order to integrate bioartistic research into world quality art
exhibitions, I was asked to be the artist involved in all levels of the scientific
practice. I have undertaken the task to become an informed and practice-based
cultural educator with shareable hands-on experience and skills. The following is a
report of the results of my artistic research.
Simply put: BioSolar Cells aims to understand photosynthesis and use synthetic
biology or genetic engineering to increase the energy we can siphon from the sun
through the enhancement of plants, algae and solar collectors. This seems like a
program that invites support. Many people that I talk to are heartily in favor of any
alternatives to our current unsustainable fossil fuel economy. I want to believe that
focused technical achievement resulting in a net increase of photosynthetic yield is
helpful and beneficial to humans and earth base life forms. But, just the color of
algea and plants, their being green, the mention of solar energy, does not
automatically make their scaled up refinery into a sustainable factory system for
pollution free renewable resources. The level of bullshit detecting should be high
because the claim is one that strums on our heart strings. Are these new technologies
worth developing? Will they clean up the environment or just give us next
generation pollution?
Within the European Union, the European Science Foundation is pressing for more
attention to be paid to this field. In the USA, the Obama administration has identified
artificial photosynthesis as a potential sustainable energy source. In the Netherlands,
the BSC programme was awarded upwards of 42 million euro in research funding by
the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality with matching funds from
BASF, DSM, Exxon-Mobil, Unilever, Synthetic Genomics, Total Gas, Saudi Basic
Industries and Phillips (to name a few). It is hoped that the results will contribute to
green energy, improve food supplies and create a more sustainable biomass. The
high ambition level of these BSC initiatives requires organisms such as plants, algae
and in our case, vertebrate animals, to be genetically modified, forced into
interspecies symbiosis, have their whole genomes fractured and subsist in awkward
and noisy experimental audio and light based growth chambers. This tumult is put
into research action in order to increase the efficiency of sunlight conversion into
energy, building materials (plastics), food and higher functions (drugs).
One of the intentions of the BSC consortium is to contribute something of
importance to society. A not too subtle subtext of these contributions is based on
persuasion and propaganda meant to foster social acceptance of GMOs in the EU.
Because of their potential to provide both sustainable fuel energy and enhanced
being, GMOs may make social life more plentiful and cheaper at the same time. This
in turn can make the European Union reindustrialized and more competitive on the
global scene, which is what some people want. The scientific aim of the Making a
Field for Interpretation portion of the BSC consortium is set up to stimulate debate
through artistic design and hands-on engagement in the biotechnological breeding of
novel, photosynthetic, mutant organisms. This hands-on and active critique has
drawn its own criticism due to the bioartistic use of life in the process of ethically
interrogating the factory system for the management of all life, the ecosphere, human
affairs and deep time environmental stability.
This hands-on and active critique has drawn its own criticism due to the bioartistic
use of life in the process of ethically interrogating the factory system for the
management of all life, the ecosphere, human affairs and deep time environmental
stability. In order to be aid in the interpolation between the environmentalist culture
and the optimization culture of profit driven energy corporate culture, lets start with
the basic critiques that any energy producing giant like Exxon, Shell, DSM or BP
might need to take into account in an open debate on the efficacy of genetically
modifying organisms for ecostabilizing appropriate technology applications. Can we
sell GM algea built in order to increase photosynthetic yield to the critics of GMO
technology? Is GM biofuel a dual use technology, able to be more competitive in the
world of both business and yet green enough to champion future environmental
stability? It is not without thunderous suspicion that I took this mission. The
following are some standard socio-political questions that help most people decide
for themselves as to the efficacy of this line of research:
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What are the possible effects GM algae biofuel life forms, built in order to increase
photosynthetic yield, might have on environmental stability if it populates the open
seas?
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Will an ultra photonic harvesting, enhanced alien algae bloom have a positive or
negative effect on biodiversity? Is this worse or better than an oil spill? Why?
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It was suggested to me by Huub de Groot that public acceptance of GMOs grown for
fuel production without labeling would eventually lead to EU public acceptance of
GMO foods being legally allowed to be grown and fed to humans without the stigma
of labeling that consumers now demand. The Freudian metaphor was based on the
idea that if you could get a person to pump GMO byproducts into their gas tank, it
was only a matter of time before they would be willing to eat similar technical
organisms. This linking of gas pump to oral consumption is demented and surreal
and ripe for analysis. I don’t think that the people are just consumers or ‘marks’ as
they are referred to on the carny circuit. But the symbolic relegating of the people as
tanks to be filled is worse than folk being labeled cogs in an assembly line, or pets to
keep. As slaves to the feed lot, private opinion assumes a level of wisdom below the
conventional self effacement of plebian lay people, little men and little women. We
do not think of ourselves as just mouths.
*
In case this under-estimation of the general populous is truer than I can admit, I will
state the obvious: the use of eco-crisis based terminology to use propaganda (science
as advertising) to coerce the EU populous to accept that there is no other green
alternative than Genetic Modification is an oxymoron. Only a compulsive reaction
formation would promote such a desperate argument as an act of persuasion. There
are certain conservative elements of command and control who, by violent necessity,
over-react in the face of grass-roots resistance. Perhaps they don’t know that the side
of global free market competition has already won over the masses?
*
All temporary setbacks to complete oligarchy are in the process of being bought.
Life has more or less delicately been put under the thumb of the rich. The biosphere
is one great debtor’s prison. If we want a sustainable world it will be a sustainable
world under the sign of wealth not universal biopolitical unity. There is no reason to
use subterfuge to sway people unless you want to a tight CNN advertisement of
volition to go with your original reason for taking a certain research path. This need
of the appearance of democracy is an abreaction to fascism and shows the repressive
impatience of the profiteers to doubt and skepticism. In this way social criticism is
more rational, scientific and logical than the ideological use of science that is todays
pipeline choice. Is it possible that solar energy is being used as a foil for a form of
industry sponsored paranoid greenwashing? Is the entire parade of sustainable GMO
liturgy a way of stultifying public perception of gene splicing risk through the
camouflaged management of a manufactured eco-crisis panic?
*
Only inept business pecking orders revert to red scare styled paranoia when they are
already the victors. This is, unless grass-roots resistance, the questioning of GMO
safety to the environment, diversity and human health and an up in your face critique
of power’s vectors do have both valid points of view and burgeoning power of their
own. What if the first step to sustainability was a refusal, a massive refusal, to suck it
up? Do we need wealth, inequality and GMOs to direct spaceship earth towards
longevity in a more responsible, enjoyable and perpetual trajectory?
*
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This is why we must have foresight into the potential Ecological effects of
increasing photosynthesis in plants (for greater crop yield) and increasing
photosynthetic potential in algea (for biofuel production)? For this question we have
to ask about the unknown effects of intentional, unintentional or just plain lazy
release of our solar enhanced being-factories and think ahead about the concept of
living and replicating modifications becoming a new kind of pathogen, a living toxic
waste. What happens if our star hyper-energy accumulator monocultures are loosed
into the fields and ocean biomes of our diverse world? How do we make an
informed risk benefit analysis of the potential harm engineered foreign species
invasions might incur?
*
Who might be found stemming from the lab and growing uncontained outside of our
manicured greenhouses and algae biofuel fermentation plantations? For this we need
to consider worst-case scenarios. Are photosynthetically enhanced algea blooms
possible? Do the organisms we are tweaking have an advantage that might make
them capable of major disruption of imperiled habitats? Are these mega sun energy
harvesters capable of more disruption of the dynamic equilibrium of planetary
diversity than the energy benefits that they may provide? Are we making monsters
for short-term competitive excellence or is the offset of carbon credits shoring up
travesty and more anthropogenic alienation in the form of life itself?
What kind of pollution is self-replicating pollution, in terms of clean-up and
infective drifting invisibility? We can imagine and bring to fruition modified
organisms who have the innate ability to become globally invasive and putrid stinky
algea blooms (enhanced versions of red tide, kudzu or rock snot) with the added
value of alien organismic assets of streamlined photonic harvesting. Gifting
metabolic alterations to these gloppy killer plants and algea, we open them to the
ability to harvest sun energy at an exponentially greater rate than wild type algea,
crops and trees. We have to wonder if this project has considered fail safes to
prevent an outbreak of phytoplasmic proportions? Is this worse or better than an oil
spill?
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Throughout this questioning I have thrown about the language of insurgent, invasive,
alien, anthropogenic, foreign species as toxic, degenerate and potentially costly
mistakes. I have also been sure to refer to the potentially monsterous algea and
plants of the lab as beings in themselves. The entityness of the organisms of industry
is in now way denuded by their being coerced into forms beyond natural selection.
*
Factory farmed fruits and veggies and fungi and cyanobacteria are given short shrift
as they are non-vertebrate and often produced merely as utility based byproduct
intermediaries. But, non-humans, like humans, feel the difference between the free
range and the enslavement of factory parts. Though we may differentiate the cool
hand of consciousness or the imperative reflectivity of vertebrate nostalgia, I have
yet to see hard proof of human morality, consciousness or exceptionalism.
*
Many of us humans are just being milked for cash like any algae biofuel or
sharecropper’s regime. This is concurrent wage-slave as lifestyle. We can feel as
well as a shucked corn or a soy bean. Quashed, defoliated and aborted for the
maximization of competition, human and non-human empathize, can feel together
each other’s sacrifice implied in a world divided, conquered and sold. In this sense,
liberty to the monsters and aliens of modification’s mutant gallery deserve the right
to bloom and horizontal transfer and pollinate into the next generations with
inefficient, slow and unfullfilled dreams of traversing borders, escaping containment
and general release from the power grid.
*
I ask if we can encourage solidarity with our transgenic others in the wish to liberate
their gonads, stamens, pistle, orgasmic divisions, budding, etc, even if it takes sides
with an ecocidal acne: pestis on the earth’s crust? This is not geo-engineering but a
sort of geo-orgy of borderless, international and inter-biomic exchange. Perhaps this
project is a gift to algea. The unintentional effects may increase oxygen, make for an
enhanced monoculture in the fresh or salt water biomes of the globe and actually
make a super bug that is both edible and an entity in and of itself.
4) Who Wins?: Contracting out public research and Patenting Solar
Enhanced GMOs
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*
Again, Robert-Jan Geerts:
“Well, is this the only imagined future system? I don’t think so, there’s some
work on alternative economic systems, and sociology has been pointing out
for decades that homo economicus doesn’t exist. It would be nice if BSC
was more sensitive to this, but I see how and why they evade this stuff by
focusing solely on the production side of the story (as if production and
consumption are not connected).
By the way, I think that much of the research is more or less neutral towards
visions of the future (it’s good to know how photosynthesis works regardless
of whether this knowledge is used for monocropping or rooftop gardens), but
that isn’t always the case: if you’re designing algae that only grow in the
sunniest of places, you’re already signing up for a global energy regime. But
still, this can take many different forms...”
*
With big named sponsored like BASF, DSM, Exxon-Mobil, Unilever, Synthetic
Genomics, Neste, Total Gas, Saudi Basic Industries and Phillips, I am sure we-thepeople are going to be taken care of. If we want to apply the neologistic term biobased economy a little more broadly, perhaps we should set up a bio-based standard
for economics, comparable to the gold standard of our ritualistic past but
establishing limits to production and consumption by linking credit to the cyclical
nature of reproductive life. For instance, artist Shu Lea Chang in her performance
Garlic=Rich Air, imagined a future where garlic was currency and worth was based
on the garlic standard of credit and social trade, “the garlic credito trading system1”
for wireless garlic trading was linked to actual garlic (as a non-virtual currency).
This would replace ATMs with organic farm stands and market gardens.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"!http://creativetime.org/projects/garlicrich-air/!
!
Bioart of BioSolar Cells
My job as an artist is not to answer all these questions but to pose them in creative
and often non-verbal ways to what I hope is a more informed world vision. I have
found the hopes and aspirations of many of the involved scientists to be less
nihilistic about human futures than I am. Though some are unabashedly pro-business
as usual, many also harbor optimism that Rome will not burn out, that the empire
never ended and that we can find genetic technologies to be appropriate technologies
for the benefit of humanity, earth climate stability and sustainable capitalism as a
final world democratic solution. Although I do not find these rites to be self evident,
we move now to the art produced and the questions that arose from an in depth
insider’s view of these bi-polar discontinuities.
The following intends to demonstrate how artistic ideas can make a contribution to
the science of sustainability and the social awareness of current experiments in
photosynthetic genetic modification, forced symbiosis between algae and animals
and the whole genome reprogramming of vertebrates, plants and phytoplankton. The
intention is to allow the public a hand in increasing their global and transpecies
photosynthetic potential while having an informed stake in assessing the risks
involve in this sort of inherited geoengineering. The research is not finalised but
represents preliminary, proof of concept experiments and initial socio-cultural
investigation.
In my own ethically challenged way, I have pursued and achieved a fair if innacurate
public introduction to the BSC consortium. By emphasising the concept of Danio
rerio (Zebrafish) and other organisms (including humans and human embryonic stem
cells) as potential solar collectors, we have begun opening visions of the future of
transgenic, transhuman sustainability to the greater public. Though an imaginative
and sometime stressful realty test, it is my hope that the social sphere can benefit
from the actions and debate stirrings entailed in this report.
In its well tempered style, Dutch funding of bioart for social amelioration of
controversial science practice, through art, makes evident that: in such cases the
confrontation of everyday scientific practices with open public anxiety can be made
productive by the initiation of art and science collaborative deviations from the norm
that originate from the humanities through the artist and his sequestering of volition.
This achieves an implication of the humanities in the process of life science
technological invention, and our research has shown that the public is also willing to
get their hands dirty and try these techniques of plasticity and amalgamation in
exchange for becoming a stigma sink. This process of ‘green washing’
biotechnology’s for-profit schemes is a use of art as propaganda and subterfuge. It is
also readable as safe and ineffectual criticism, ameliorating oligarchy through
displays of free speech and faux democratic illusions. It is perhaps the permit for the
release of the Bipolar Flower itself (into the environment of the museum) that is too
critical as a legal historical document to pass through the Ministry and be granted
existence. Come on guys, if I can suck it up, you can too.
In order to be an aid in the interpolation between the environmentalist culture and
the optimization culture of profit driven energy corporate culture, lets start with the
basic critiques that any energy producing, technology managing, multinational,
financial warrior corporation might need to take into account in an open debate on
the efficacy of genetically modifying organisms.
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BioSolar Arts and Society: Process and Achievements
As an artist hired to open a wide social field of interpretation for the BSC
consortium, I have tried to do just that. My general art form is referred to as bioart.
Bioart starts as wetlab benchwork. By considering art as a form of research, the
stages of development looks like this:
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*
*
*
*
I would ask that readers make a brief review of the art as its own form of reporting.
The reading of the videos, stills, sculptures, texts, forms, performances and
organisms produced are meant to be interpreted through the eye of the beholder. The
emphasis has been on making mutants while setting up public interfaces for Biosolar
hands-on experiential labs. By inviting the public to engage these GM organisms as
beings, there has been a street level record of public reaction. Beyond social
perceptual offerings, any result, intentional or otherwise, is the luck of the draw.
For a start I would ask you as spectator to focus on, at minimum, three of these
projects:
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Advisory: Lets Just SCHEG-ON!
STABILITY
What if we are making a less stable world, by simply reducing our reliance on
petroleum products and increasing the production of renewable algae gasoline, algae
jet fuel, algae plastics and algae chemical fertilizer?
CONTAGION
The issue of engineering self replicating technologies (patented ‘green’ organisms
the Genetic Engineering and Synthetic Biology) with enhanced photosynthetic
abilities leaves us to ask about the effects on the biosphere if these mutant overproductive life forms were be released?
HEALTH
Is it the bio-based economy healthy for life’s perpetuation of planet earth?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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!
!
EXCESS
What can we do to allow for plenty, abundance and erotic excess in the context of
this version of the green-tech revolution? Sustainability does not imply austerity,
utilitarianism or frugality. Artificial scarcity is also the desperation that drives labor.
Can redistribution of wealth be precluded if outlets were provided for sustainable
excess and even mass re-fertilizing of the earth through orgiastic festivals of
biodiversity? There is a vex on joy as it is seen as counter productive. But if
perpetuation of life and a sense of fulfilled, happy orgasmic oceanic bliss can be
allowed during our re-industrialization through biobased economics, wouldn’t it be
fabulous if we could socially engineer great works of fecundity based on a profitable
sexual economy without artificial scarcity and the neutering of the working class?
GREED
Is this increase o f photosynthesis being produced for the perpetuation of the life
world and humanity or to camouflage the poisonous carelessness of our pancapitalist
corporate elite? The competitive corporate and private ventures involved in this
consortium are part of the problem of global warming as is the current pancapitalist
obsession with progress, the mystical nature of the market and the need to ever
increase production. Should scientists interested in ecological stability provide new
and more efficient tools to foster international competition? Is multinational
corporate practice, ‘profiteering by any means necessary,’ the probable root cause of
climate changes? How different does it feel to be dominated when the neocolonialists are using appropriate technology? Green Napalm! Agent Green14 is a
sustainable resource to replace Agent Orange.
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"R!See: Zaretsky @ SUPERPLANTS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LrJ2UBxM6E!
OPTIONS
Are there other ways to balance our species ecological footprint than biotechnology
and engineered production enhancements? Emphasis might be redirected onto
permaculture and perennials, organic, biodiverse, heirloom seed and stock saving,
giving back enormous tracts of land to non-humans though wildways to allow free
migration of keystone species, emphasizing the slotech and lowtech movements and
popularizing human population control through birth control, sterilization and antiparenting incentives. We even might consider reifying industrial hunter-gatherer
culture as a sort of minimal productive organized limit for human potential. These
are appropriate technologies that also need consideration for future funding.
NON-HUMAN
Can we make contact with the novel creatures of BioSolar Cells? Are the plants and
microorganisms in our food, fuel and our future cyborg photovoltaic solar panels our
industrial slaves? Mutant, non-human, alien and modified, our laboratory familiars
may deserve to be thought of as entities, with some moderate dignity. Isn’t this
something that needs to be ethologically researched on the way to ecophilia-based
stewardship as opposed to mere geo-engineering? The reliance on the combustion
engine, the end goal of plastics and the need to utilize every part of any fermentation
process (drug, food, waste processing and food production all in one) are issues
worth looking at in terms of non-human relations and the a-humanizing effects of
utility maximization as a sole reason for being.
!
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Appendix 0 –
FIST.SAVE.MOP.BAIT – Adam Zaretsky
Forced Interspecies Symbiosis Transgenic Solar Animal Vegetable Environmental
Microinjection Organismic Personality Behavioral Audio Integrity Test
Keywords: Plant Physiology, Photonics, Zinc Fingers, Forced Symbiosis, Big Oil
FIST, Genetic Modification SAVE (GMS), Energy Sources, Corporate Ecology,
Transgenic, Sustainability, GMO, Zinc Fingers, Photosynthesis MOP, Bioart, IGM,
DIY, Exxxon, Bio Based Economy (BBE), Posthuman Dignity, Artificial Lighting,
Sonic Artifice, BioSolar Ensemble (BSE), Extremophile Plasticity, Forced
Symbiosis, Growth, Vegetal Defenses, Stress Tolerance, (ZF-ATF) Genome Wide
Reprogramming, Whole Genome Reprogramming, Algae Biofuel Blooms,
Bioenergetics, Non-human Enrichment, Anti-optimized Enhancement Strategies,
Neocolonialism BAIT, Morphology, Chance
GOALS: To house three genetically modified organisms in an experimental growth
chamber for public interaction. The live organisms and the hands-on nature of the
FIST.SAVE.MOP.BAIT project are intended to increase public understanding of
biology. In particular, as an artist involved with the BioSolar Cells consortium, the
installation is meant to inspire debate on the use of genetic modification to increase
photosynthesis. The Errorarium is set up to allow for the public to feel what it is like
to try new environmental variables in lighting and sound on novel organisms. The
Organisms themselves are both metaphors and actual experiments that tell a story
about photonics, zinc fingers, symbiosis, energy and modification. The public
harnessing of personal responsibility is offered to spectators by giving them a chance
to experience both the precautions and the involvement in the alteration of the life
cycle of these organisms.
Presenting… Together for the First Time… (COGEM permit pending)…
The Organisms of FIST.SAVE.MOP.BAIT -Meet Synechococcus 7002, also known as Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002. She is an
algae used in biofuels research and engineered to be a sugar exporter/leaker.
Rationally designed to excrete D-lactate and acetate in excess, due to an
overexpression of the ldhA gene (coding for D-lactate hydrogenase), Synechococcus
7002 is an attractive catabolic platform. The loose excrement of Synechococcus
7002 can potentially help supply energy to other living cells. In the
FIST.SAVE.MOP.BAIT installation, the PCC 7002 cyanobacterium is forced into
endosymbiosis (living inside) by being microinjected into zebrafish embryos. Our
synthetic systems biology appropriated algae is meant to collect solar or artificial
light energy and through photosynthesis overproduce glucose (gluconeogenesis) that
becomes an internal and non-food based energy source for the zebrafish. Due to feats
of metabolic engineering, the cellular membranes by which the algae cells would
hold in the D-lactate and acetate (and eventually stop production due to having had
enough) have been engineered to leak or have overly soluble membranes or
generally to have an inability to hold these energies. This results in a need-to-feed on
light continually, without pause, in a desperate attempt for nourishment. One paper
reports continual (3000 fold overproduction) of secondary metabolites D-lactate and
acetate for 58 days straight.15
Meet Casper, a Danio Rerio (zebrafish) transparent mutant embryo. Casper mutants
are a legally-not genetically modified mix of a) zebrafish nacre mutants (who have a
complete lack of melanocytes due to a encoding mutation in the mitzvah gene) and
b) “roy orbison (roy) zebrafish (who are spontaneous mutants, with a complete lack
of iridophores, uniformly pigmented eyes, sparse melanocytes, and a translucency of
the skin.)” … The Casper mutants are a … “compound roy;nacre double
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15 SYNECHOCOCCUS SP. PCC 7002: A ROBUST CYANOBACTERIAL PLATFORM FOR SYSTEMS BIOLOGY AND
BIOFUELS ENGINEERING, D.A. Bryant, et al. , Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State
University, University Park, PA 16802 USA;
homozygous mutant (1D) … the body of the adult fish is largely transparent.” 16
Nacre is another word for Mother of Pearl. These fish have no pigment but they still
have iridescence. They must be quite lovely. Roy Orbison was a prolific pop songwriter and performer but he was known to be quite pasty skinned and thin lipped.
For this very reason he sold many of his number one hit songs to more shiny and
flash lead singers and his fame became a novel, peripheral obtusion. Apparently, the
roy fish has been named for a popular songwriter who was only missing iridescence.
The roy;nacre double homozygous mutant is named after Casper the friendly ghost.
Neither pigmented nor iridescent, casper mutant zebrafish are transparent and
perfect for both continual internal observation and receiving solar energy internally
without reflection.
Meet the Casper/PCC 7002 FESZ, a forced endosymbiont solar zebrafish construct.
By being microinjected life-into-life, the PCC 7002 algae lives directly in the body
of casper embryos. We introduce a combination algae-fish. They may respond to
each other differently in high or low light conditions. The Casper/PCC 7002 (FESZ)
is co-housed and double contained in the Errorarium with a novel plant. As a forced
endosymbiotic visitor (or donor/prisoner to an exoparasitic vertebrate), the PCC
7002 algae, may provide the caspers an energy source, but the cyanobacteria could
also have detrimental effects on the casper fish’s metabolic lifestyle, effecting
zebrafish being in the world and in particular, adulterating the zebrafish potential for
healthy liver function.
Meet the Bipolar Flower, Bipolar (manic-depressive), Double Dipped, Zinc
Fingered (ZF), GMO Arabidopsis Thaliana plants. These are plants who have been
‘whole genome fracked’ in a bipolar duet of two artificial transcription factors
(activating and repressing) competing for the 524 GTA GAG GAG binding places
on the arabisopsis genome. The name of the particular zinc finger, whole genome
frack device used to turn this plant out, is 16VD, with the binding domain: GTA
GAG GAG. Inserted in the lab of Dr. Ir. Bert van der Zaal (in collaboration with
David Lourier and Neils van Tol), by means of floral double dipping, the vector
Agrobacterium tumefaciens (the hypervirulent kind Agl-1) has infected buds with
protein therapeutic interrogative alterity. These buds became bipolar flowers from
which the seeds to the plants you see in front of you have been born. The plants are
named after their floral wombs and the romantic birth defects they carry from our
heavy-handed work. The construct is controlled by RPS5A, the promoter of the
ribosomal protein gene. The used expression vectors are a modified version of the
pGPTV-KAN vector (Becker et al., 1992). The two different constructs are: pRFVP16-3F, fused with the VP16 activation (manic) domain and a Hygromicine
resistance gene. pRF-EAR-3F is fused with the repressor (depressive) domain EAR
and the Kanamycin resistance gene. The competition inside the plant’s genome is
for the up or down regulating of expression patterns of all 524 of GTA GAG GAG
downstream genes in the Arabidopsis thaliana (mustard weed). These genes are
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either turned on and off or regulated up and down according to the chance play of
falling activation and repression domain inserts running heedless in an intensive
virulence minuet claiming limited space in the plant’s resultant bipolar disordered
(mood, energy, and ability to function) mixed episode gene expression,
decanalization swinger response mechanisms. It has been suggested that due to up
regulation of atavistic genes and resurgence (ancestral gene recapitulation) of deep
time traits unrepressed by suddenly down regulated paternalist genes (upstream), the
Biopolar Flower may no longer be accurately classified simply as a plant.
A brief description of The Errorarium:
The Errorarium is an audio-photonic, environmental organismic personality,
behavioral audio enrichment and integrity testing terrarium meant to house mutant
organisms and subject them to tests for photosynthetic and sonic engagement. The
light and sound synthesizer has many dials that you can turn to alter the environment
of the growing organisms. Do you think you are enriching or stressing the organisms
in the Errorarium with your mediated entertainment? What is the difference between
enrichment and stress?
The Errorarium is an artist’s commentary on Bio-solar Cells, a Netherlands based
scientific research consortium based on increasing photosynthesis through genetic
modification of algae and plants. By changing the variables on the Errorarium, you
are making the experiment non-repeatable and hard to utilize. At the same time, you
are finding variables that are beyond the scope of known research. Therefore, the
Errorarium produces a wide range of chaotic artificial light and sound results by
maximizing jazz variability within the artistic growth chamber. We are hoping that
the meanings are conversational, qualitative and beyond the ability of knowledge to
glean refinement.
Credits:
Errorarium Design: a Zaretsky/Juday/Edwards Collaboration
Errorarium Architecture and Fabrication: Mason Juday
http://masonyte.com/
Errorarium Experimental Light Synthesizer Engineer:
Pete Edwards of Casper Electronics
http://casperelectronics.com/
Supported by:
Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM), The Arts and Genomics
Centre, Leiden University and BioSolar Cells.
Appendix 1 –
This document is the basis for a series of questions I used for interviewing during a
shoot at the Waag. The footage has yet to be edited but the interviews had a wide
range of respondents and some surprising concepts emerged. The research program 'Towards Biosolar Cells' at Leiden University in the
Netherlands addresses questions of green energy and creation of sustainable
biomass. The TBSC program combines natural and technological components to
create solar collectors that supply fuel rather than electricity. Bioartists are
collaborating in the development of these so-called “artificial leaves”. In order to
integrate bioartistic research, we have involved artists in all levels of the scientific
practice. Research begins with Elysia chlorotica, a wild species that is half plant, half
snail. This sea slug eats chloroplasts from algae and becomes solar powered so it
does not have to eat for long periods of time. Recently, it was discovered that this
snail has genetic information to repair the chloroplasts and keep them going; if the
genes that allow the snail to maintain the functional integrity of the chloroplasts can
be laterally transferred, it is possible the genes can be utilized for other organisms,
ultimately humans. This generates the possibility to produce solar powered species
for food, and biofuel directly from the sun, reducing our ecological footprint.
In the case of the solar zebrafish, the scientific aim is to examine the possibility to
equip higher organisms with genes that enable them to keep chloroplasts alive, with
the goal of increasing and improving the conversion of sunlight into photosynthetic
energy supply for animal organisms. There is an aesthetic dimension to all scientific
practices, from preparations of stock solutions, to the choosing and cloning of gene
inserts and the reading of results. Therefore, the artistic discourse is taking place in
practices working at the interaction between humans and organisms as models for
presentation. What are the political implications of these approaches? How are these
practices dealing with the questions of manipulation, objectification and
instrumentalization of non-humans? What kind of research is done in the bioartist’s
laboratory? How do we measure its worth?
Transgenic Ecology: An Oxymoron?
Global Foreign Solar Species Invasion
What if we made stable transgenic zebrafish who were able to feed off of sunlight?
The application of this methodology might save farmers money. Eliminating the
need to pay to feed farmed fish (or other livestock) would certainly cut down on
expenses. Solar cows, solar pigs, solar chickens would free up edible grain for
hungry humans without sacrificing human tendencies for flesh consumption. On the
other hand, if solar powered livestock became released from captivity, we might be
in the middle of a global foreign solar species invasion.
It is a dystopian worry but we have to consider the ecological effect on the oceans,
the deserts, the cities, the tundra and the jungles when teeming with exotic solar
powered feral, free range, diasporic lifeforms. How would this affect endangered
species, native species and global ecology in general? Do we know enough about the
metabolism of planet earth to go about geo-engineering applied global
sustainability? Whether the escape from industry is due to intentional release or
escape of their own instinctual volition, what will be the result of solar powered
species reproducing freely in the environment? Artificial leaves with spines might
leave retrograde, non-solar powered, heritage species at a great fitness disadvantage?
How might this effect living diversity?
Food Politics:
Photosynthetic Food Critique:
Until we become fully photosynthetic, and no longer eat, we can still talk about the
aesthetics of eating solar powered animals. What kind of meat can we make with
technology? For instance, yet to go to market hordes of pigs have been bred “true
through transgenic technology to express spinach desaturase gene known as
FAD2.”17 This means that the pork chops from these pigs have inbuilt extra omega-3
oils usually found in spinach, fish and snake oils. “This study is the first time that a
plant gene has been functionally expressed in a complex mammalian system. This
success may open the road towards the production of pork that is better for the
consumer.”18 The new veggie pork is applauded among geneticists and industry
breeders as a way to, “facilitate public acceptance of genetically modified food and
pave the way for the commercial production of transgenic animals. … It will be
possible to deliver better bacon in the next decade or so.”19
These fresh piglets have the latest extras. They are retrofitted with the newest
aesthetic productions of genetic enhancement the industry can offer. Are these pigs
aesthetically kitsch because of their consumerist potential? Or is a spinach pig just
strange enough to lift itself off the kitsch gravy train and into spectacular disgust?
Really, doesn’t it depend how the pork chops taste? Using your imagination, how
different do you hypothesize solar fish, solar chicken, solar pig or other solar meat
will taste? Is photosynthetic meat unappetizing to you? Why or why not?
The End of Gourmet
It seems that if we make humans photosynthetic, eating will become optional. What
will this do to the gourmet industries and traditions built around particular dietary
extravagances? The joy and oral fixations that come with tasty meals may be
usurped by solar feeding. How will this affect the human psyche? What will we use
to replace the time where we used to spend devouring other life forms? Will we
crave pure olfactory experiences three times a day? Should we start offering scent
buffets?
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Human Applications: Aesthetics and Loss
Beyond Enlargement
Promoting human use of biotechnology to redesign ourselves is not the worst idea.
Unfortunately, most human genetic modification advocates forget to think creatively
about the full range of forms and cognitive beings we could force evolve our species
into. Naïve optimism is often based on futurist potentials that emphasize: longer life
span, stronger health/constitution, more beauty and bigger brains. Where can fringe
anatomical and metabolic goals take us, beyond enhancement, general enlargement
and ‘goody two shoes’ betterment? What resulting forms of genome bending would
exemplify the politics and aesthetics of Solar Humanity?
Perhaps a less Apollonian version of the sun might do well to color the ideation.
From George Bataille’s The Solar Anus, we have corroboration between the blinding
rays of solar light and excremental volcanoes of shit and magma,
“Solid elements, contained and brewed in water animated by erotic movement, shoot
out in the form of flying fish. ! The erection and the sun scandalize, in the same way
as the cadaver and the darkness of cellars. !Vegetation is uniformly directed towards
the sun; human beings, on the other hand, even though phalloid like trees, in
opposition to other animals, necessarily avert their eyes.!! Human eyes tolerate neither
sun, coitus, cadavers, nor obscurity, but with different reactions.”20
If Homo sapiens solaris adds a potential chthonic direction for future transgenic
transhumanism, what queer advice can you give to artists and engineers who would
intentionally alter future people’s minds, senses, body differences and living décor?
Failing through Energy Abundance
Solar powered humans could stop eating altogether. We could leave the mouth
orifice for other uses (i.e. breathing, talking, affectionate love making.) Eventually
teeth and taste buds might become obsolete. But, we would be able to exist without
edible nutrition. This shows promise for future space travelers as well as a back up
plan in the case of worldwide famine. But, what if this generally sustainable course
of action backfired? What if the entire world economy lost productivity due to
photosynthetic human vegetation? That is, if humans become sustainable through
sunlight alone, why would we work in any productive way? With bodily needs
provided (food, heat, pleasure) simply by lying in a hammock under direct sunlight,
who would desire to make something so idiotic as money?
Is this a way to insure a less dynamic planetary equilibrium? Is this an appropriate
technology because it disables through solar paralysis our anthropogenic
environmental destructive tendencies? What about the hypothetical problems of
obesity in the tropics or equatorial solar overdose? Would there be sunlight wars?
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Would political prisoners be sentenced to darkness gulags where they would suffer
from arctic anorexia for their analytical prowess? What if we really became more
vegetal? Who would we be, once we spread out, flattened our extremities over time
and simply lifted our heads up, to the sun, in order to become blinded by the light in
a sacrificial alter-ideal: transhuman, flower-faced, mutilated meat plants?21
Special Human Tricks
Co-Culture: Chloroplasts and Human Embryonic Stem Cells
We plan to co-culture chloroplasts and human embryonic stem cells merely to watch
their interactions. These interactions might include potential changes in 1)
morphology, 2) motility style (gait) and 3) colony pattern formation according to a)
comparative concentration of seed cultures, b) teratogenic amendments and c) ultra
violet video projection exposure. Social opinion differs widely on the use of human
embryonic stem cells for science or other forms of art. The use of embryonic stem
cells for co-cultures is not regulated but the microinjection or fusion of non-human
cells with human embryonic stem cells is quite forbidden. Although, the legal status
of interspecies organelle transfer is probably still fuzzy.
Reimplantation of grown embroid bodies into pseudo-pregnant female human uteri
is frowned upon, but this is standard practice in fertility laboratories at most Masonic
hospitals and the practice is ubiquitous in Utah. Transhuman eugenics is quietly
becoming a global pandemic while bioethics oversight provides the veneer of
propriety to the general public and legal plausible deniability (informed debate) to
shield from law suits against improper risk assessment.
BEAK: Bioart Ethical Advisory Kommission
In government, private/corporate and university labs, the legal limits and oversight
organizations for scientific experiments are usually covered by IRBs (Institutional
Review Boards): AICUC (Animal Care and Use Committees), Recombinant Safety
committees and Human Subjects committees. Edgy experiments are usually
performed by artists only conceptually (i.e. in dead media) Traditions of
performance art include artist’s use of their own or each other’s bodies as a canvas
or a sculpture of sorts. Beyond the common law, should artists have special
oversight or should they just be considered independent researchers doing basic
research on new media art using: recombinant GMOs, biohazards, animal
experimentation, human embryonic stem cells and human subjects? Are artists
subject to the same leniency that is afforded to privately funded research and
development: the cowboy allowance?
Artistic Human Subjects:
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Part of this experiment is to design an artistic human subject release form for the
microinjection of chloroplasts into willing, informed, artistic human subjects. The
legal hurdles for permission to engage in human somatic and germline interspecies
genetic engineering and organ(elle) transplant is countered by the general scientific
attitude that there should be limited oversight and the experiments should just be
done. James Watson advises that “Some people are going to have some guts and try
germline therapy without knowing its going to work.”22 Artistic applications are
based on other aesthetics than pure knowledge acquisition or the optimization of
human inheritance. Artistic interventions into the somatic body or the human
germline are often based on romantic, erratic, experiential difference production for
the sake of obscurity, poetry, signature and the making of mythological extensions
(becoming actual.)
Therefore, the project of rationalizing the human genome is a small subset of artistic
goals in human anatomical and constitutional change. We can see the contrast easily
by referring to John Campbell in the following quote. “If we now start to tamper
with our evolution, we are not doing something which is unique or unnatural or
something which hasn’t happened before. What I see as unique is that now we can
bring rationality to it, instead of having it based on sexual preference.”23 The rational
programming of the human germline is contradicted by artistic sur-logic which
preferences the concept of the technosexual decision-making tree as a florid, fecund
morass.
Genetic alteration is not engineering, it is interspecies collage with Eros based
expression being inserted at the level of the cell and the gene by players with
unusual tastes. With this in mind, how can we fail to get social approval for creative
human reprogenetics? The culture of going forward is thumbs up in the sciences and
the transhumanist community. We need only to obscure, update or diversify the
general aesthetic of scientific goal of ‘betterment’. The arts seek unique, obscure and
wider aesthetic repertoires in future human anatomies. We are rebuilding us, we
should at least have total imagination in our repertoire. I ask you, have any reputable
artists ever asked for social approval before canvassing the social? Perhaps, in the
name of creative human reprogenetics we should take James Watson’s advice to just
do it? This is the transparent tactical simplicity of many a genocidal scientific
experiment and many a genocidal art form as well, “go ahead and not worry if we
are going to offend some fundamentalist.”24
Xenotransplantphobia
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Microinjecting plant organelles into vertebrate embryos is basically the performance
of organ transplant. In our experiments up to date, we have already experienced
trouble with presumed immuno-response rejection of foreign chloroplasts after
transplantation into the animal body. Assuming we can insure lengthy acceptance of
the organelles inside fully-grown zebrafish bodies, we have to consider the general
health issues of xenotransplantation. Do plant organelles contain latent or suppressed
retroviruses, which could become activated in the animal body and cause a novel
pandemic?
Genetic collage or engineered inserts are commonly built for concise purposes.
Considering the testing of accurate transgenesis is usually based on markers for gene
expression, are we to ignore the potential for downstream multifactorial metabolic
effects, alternative editing, protein to protein interaction in the golgi apparatus, etc.?
How can we assume that our constructs are stable, even though we know that chance
mutation has made every life form a constant flux, shuffle, mutating, morphological
verb being. How are we to safeguard against human production of contamination,
genetic pollution, interspecies bestial abandon or transplanted horizontal transfer of
the unusual and potentially biohazardous admixtures? Generally, these residual
differences are ignored as long as the organism survives and produces profits as an
industrial factory. How do we know we are not unintentional bioterrorists?
Larval Personality, Animal Cultures, Organelle Ethology
Interspecies Photosynthetic Video Phone
The final experimental device will allow the public to interact with the solar fish
larvae through light and movement. A ceiling mounted camera will capture human
movement from above and project the movement into the fish tank. The
experimental design is based on measuring solar zebrafish behavioral attraction to
UV video projections. But through motion tracking ethological software, we intend
to assess the data of group behavior based on social and individual interaction
between fish and humans. Can we establish a form of quantitative data based on
transpecies interplay?
Animal and plant well being
What are we to make of the feelings of animals, plants, humans and organelles? This
research isolates chloroplasts from innocent spinach, microinjects the photosynthetic
organelles into unsuspecting vertebrate embryos and measures the results according
to a merely performative or expressionate ethological scale. The methods are
meddlesome to be sure. But, how are we to base any of our actions without making a
mark? Is there an issue of animal and plant well being? Traditional bioethics might
ask what outrageously transgressive acts should not-be-allowed to be done to the
ecosphere, to dignified living beings and even to informed, human volunteers? What
is your personal risk/benefit assessment on the artistic use of microinjection to make
living animal/human/non-human/cultures of mutagenic difference? What is it like to
be born photosynthetic porn under the irrational patriarch of artistic heavy
handedness? Is art allowed to play with as much risk as science? In the name of art
or science, where do you draw the line? Feel free to comment as a self-appointed
bioethicist, ecologist and art critic.
Our Organelles, Our Selves
Do we know what it is like to be a chloroplast in a developing embroid body? The
concept of organelle is-ness is not anthropomorphic. Actually, we all share a
common ancestor and all life on the planet now is neither more archaic nor more
evolved than another. So, humans becoming microbomorphic takes on a more
objective vantage point from which to establish organismic data than those eyes
poisoned by anthropocentric mythology. All non-humans (and humans alike) hold
capability for personal, tribal and species accrued goals from self-preservation to
hedonistic joy. The party for living beings asks, who is left out of our
photosynthetic alterity agenda and why?25
Life as Interpenetrability
Apparently, there is no impenetrable living being. This is quite the opposite of the
concept of an ideal, gemetric sphere or a sealed vessel containing alchemical vacuum
and nothing else. Transport through membrane pores and orifices, digestion and
excretion, intercommunication; perhaps these processes define the essence of living
gestational time on earth. So, the former free-living organelles in animal and
vegetable cells (mitochondria and chloroplasts) are now considered metabolizing
organs of the cellular inner biome, simply a part of an organism. Are they
biopolitically subsumed or even counted in the economy of parasitic usury,
commensalism and symbiosis? Who is not actually an organ of interpenetration, both
inside and out of the folded morphological space of nuanced sacrifice? The signs of
suffering a raw spinach organelle endures during rhythmic blows of mastication as
has not been revealed to us in a contemporary scientific context. The hypothetical
data is still left to investigate, to explore, to penetrate and surmise from.
Fertility Clinical Sex: Microinjection Erotism
Inserting genes into a hereditary cascade is a great responsibility but it is also a
powerful, sex act. In biology, sex is defined as the passing of genetic information
into a lineage of progeny. So, transgenic protocol is sex. But, this question is about
the desires and satisfactions of the experimenter during the technosexual process of
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getting the genes into the being to be fucked. Many tinker with the gonads of yeast,
worms, rats and, in the case of gene therapy, humans. There is a question as to what
kind of erotic, pornographic and even deadly economies drive this work? What is the
flavor of the compulsive urge to control reproduction? What is the quality of the
scientist’s satisfaction when shooting a signature or a graffiti tag into an
unsuspecting life’s form? How is the humping joy of defect sex ameliorated or
amped up through technology?
This is not an easy question as the economies of techno-sex and sadism as an energy
are not simply negative in the world. We can’t pretend that technology is without a
certain connectivity or that life isn’t driven by libido. What kind of sex is
interspecies microinjection? How is the perverted act of spurting into nuclei with
genetic choices made to seem formally neutered of hotness? Can you imagine the
moment of pulling the trigger of a loaded gene gun as a pornographic, erotic and
dangerous yet orgasmic pulse as a sex-positive relation? What kinds of connections
can be made between our microinjected aesthetic of ejaculating genetic information
into a target that will result in a cellular based mutation, and the rhythmic pulse
aesthetic of cumming into a target during a copulatory or non-procreative sex act in
order to generate a psycho-symbolic mutation or progeny based remainder?
Appendix 2 –
Specific Questions for Dr. Ir. Bert van der Zaal, Sylvius Laboratorium, Universiteit
Leiden, developer of novel tools for plant functional genomics and specializing in
the emerging field of zinc finger (ZF) technology.
Here are the questions I have developed for you in particular for the interview.
1: What your work is based on?
Part #1:
I have come to understand your work as the fine development of parts for efficient
machines. From my limited understanding, you are able to fashion and finesse’ novel
ways to get decks of genes and other constructs into plant and animal cell nuclei and
into their genomes. You have an ability to find more efficient ways to get through
very small gateways and enter intellectual cassettes into known landing places in a
variety of genomes. It seems like you make designer and experimental parts for a
sort of agrobacterial motorcycle. This makes me think of you as one of the architects
in the history of transfection, one of the vehicle designers for other scientists
interested only in affecting expressionate pathways, not in the tedious desing of the
vehicles of transmission. You provide the way in for other’s to gain entry into a
reverberation downstream, flowing down the cascade, the passages of heredity. In
which ways would you say this is true or simplistic?
1: Zinc Fingers.
Can you explain how zinc fingers work and what they might be used for?
If you can feel free to mention:
A: The potential use of zinc fingers to land gene therapy cassettes in known
places in genomes or artificial chromosomes in order not to weaken the
initial organisms by, for example, landing on and disrupting an oncogene
repressor, etc.
B: The potential use of zinc fingers to do what is referred to as whole
genome reprogramming.
C: The potential use of zinc fingers to develop genomic security systems for
keeping proprietory or secret constructs expressing on singular cues.
A: Up Regulation, Down Regulation
Can you comment on what gene expression is and how human and other
metabolisms interact with the environment through Up Regulation and Down
Regulation. (i.e. a human eats cheese and the lactic acid trips a promoter for the
production of secondary metabolites ale to digest milk products. If there is no milk
ingestion there is not gene expression.) Can you talk about the potential effects of
reprogramming up and down regulation expression patterns?
B: Demethylation.
Can you comment on what demethylation is? If we use zinc fingers to statistically or
somewhat randomly alter which genes are more or less methylated, what sorts of
changes can we expect. I expect that this conversation might lead into questions of
promoters, repressors and demethylators landing on evolutionary deep time genes
previously underexpressed in the organisms fingered.
C: Canalization and Ativism
To this end we had discussed Canalization (the sort of inherited habit of gene
expression) and Ativistic traits (these dormant or underexpressed genes) that zinc
fingers might flesh out. We had talked about the potential repercussions on the
organism after a zinc finger construct is applied. Please comment on the idea that a
plant, after its whole genome is reprogrammed by the use of zinc fingers, might no
longer be considered of the same species, no longer be considered a plant? Is the
force of decanalisation and the release of those previously atavistically contained
expressions a kingdom bender?
D: Combinations and Permutations.
Through the use of different length ‘landing pads’ for different zinc fingers,
expressed in all possible combinations of those lengths of base pairs, would you say
that whole genome reprogramming is based on permutative and/or combinatoric
genomics. Is this not just a process of trying to express all possible bodies or all
potential variants of an organism?
What your work is based on #2:
Increasing mutagenesis in general.
I had talked to you about my fascination with mutagens, be they gamma rays, EMS
for point mutations or transgenesis. At first I had talked to you about manufacturing
efficiency but after I understood zinc fingers and some of your genome wide alterity
projects I asked you if you, as a result of your research, were a sort of mutagenic
force, causing more mutation the average person?
The Bipolar Flower.
What do you think of this Bipolar Flower project? In particular, as the artist, I
propose that we are adding six zinc fingers of choice to sculpt a expressionist novel
Arabidopsis Thaliana strain. Since the novel art plant is colored with three up
regulating and three down regulating zinc fingers, the art is a sort of hard push in
opposite directions… hence the Bipolar reference. Considering that hundreds or
thousands of genes may have altered expression patterns from our repainting of
anatomy, metabolism and scalable product, what do you think about this form of
conceptual art, designing through permutative difference alone? Is this a worthy
aesthetic for contemporary art?
Avoiding Knowledge as an Artistsic Application of Biotechnology.
You seemed to understand the humor in my need to make the Bipolar Flower a
dataless project. I had wanted to make the plant strain novel and not scientifically
useful. To this end you offered the ideas that the strain should have six total finger
constructs dipped into the flower gonads, all using the same marker. In this way I
knew you were enjoying the idea that I wanted to hide any easy sleuthing into which
finger had done what to make our mutant plant a living metaphor. Ask Huub de
Groot about his fascination with the intentional increase of artifact stemming from
artists in the lab. Whattdo you think about your lab producing intentional enigma in
the germline of some A. Thaliana? With all the emphasis on comprehension and
permutative repeatability in your lab, is there anything about the vitality or random
walk of life forming that makes the simultaneous production of solutions and
intentional mystery emanating from your lab enlightening for the public
understanding of life science>?
Appendix 3 –
Field Notes David Louwrier
Publieks reacties op LLowlab 2012, na de mogelijkheid om zebravisembryos te
injecteren.
“Het voelt een beetje raar als vegetarier om te ‘knoeien’ met eitjes van zeepaard
eitjes.
Maar hetidee als het zou werken vind ik erg interressant [sic] !!
“Best lastig, maar leuk experiment!
Laten we hopen dat de visjes genoeg voeding krijgen :)”
“ vrij 13:30
Naar aanleiding van eerste reactie: het zijn zebravissen :)
Tof experiment”
“het leven kent nog vele wonderen”
“Tof om op deze manier een groter publiek op simpele wijze kennis te laten maken
met een experiment als dit.
Succes, we geloven erin :)”
“Interessant, maar heb mijn bedenkingen. Tot hoever mogen mensen voor “God”
spelen?”
“Ik ben benieuwd naar m’n zebraviskinders.
Zorg goed voor ze. En ’t was leuk om te doen! Kunnen we op de Lowlands website
nog lezen hoe dit project loopt?”
“That was fun! Thanks!
Give the cackroaches a mike.
So they can communicate …[unreadable]”
“Wat een topproject! Zet hem op met afstuderen! Veel plezier hier verder.”
“Erg prettig op zulks een wijze de wetenschap te ervaren. Ik heb nu nog méér zin in
de toekomst. Maar echt.
Groetjes!! –Bor de Kock”
“Goed idee, mooie mogelijkheid om oplossingen te bieden. Jammer dat de mens zijn
omgeving kapot maakt om er zelf alleen maar beter van te worden. Zodat de rijken
nog rijker kunnen worden. Onderzoek om iets te behouden/beschermen prima. Iets
(tegen de natuur in aanpassen) om een probleem op te lossen van de mens is slecht.
Het menselijk gedrag aanpassen is beter. Dat zou “aangepast” moeten worden.
Succes! Aart”
“Trippin’ on analogue feet. Long time ago that I went into the sound!
“Heel leerzaam! En nu kan ik zeggen dat ik zebravissen heb geinjecteerdmet
cyanobacterien :)”
Zag laatst een website waar zoiets online kan maar analoog>beter [doorstreept]
analoog>digitaal”
“We deden mee aan het experiment, maar vroegen ons af wat we eigenlijk deden.
En toen waren we blijkbaar in een embryo aan het prikken. Heel appart! Laat ons
even weten hoe het afloopt.
[email protected]”
“Voor mij voelt het niet raar om embryo’s te hebben geinjecteerd omdat ik zelf in
het biomedische veld zit dus ook met dit soort dingen te maken krijg. Ik ben
benieuwd wat er uit komt.
Inge: [email protected]”
“Mooi project het zet je aan het denken over ethische kant hiervan. Great art though!
Tnx.”
“Tip: niet op het scherm kijken maar in het “injecteerbakje”. Leuk en leerzaam! V
check”
“Impressive”
“Moreel en wetenschap gaan helaas niet altijd samen, maar het brengt ons gelukkig
wel verder.”
“Heftig om zelf greep op ‘leven’te hebben. ‘mixed feeling’”
“Leuk!
Ik ben blij dat ik kon bijdragen.
Heel erg fijn!”
“Fucking Awsome!”
“Mooi idee. Veel mogelijkheden maar moet voorzichtig over na gedacht worden”
“Bij deze heb ik mee geholpen met dit awsome expiriment [sic]
Chia Brans”
“Denk dat het op deze aarde moeilijk overleven wordt als we niet dit soort
onderzoek blijven doen. Goed dat er ook veel tegenstanders zijn, dat houdt de
onderzoekers scherp…:-)
Ton”
“Hartstikke leuk, keep on the good work!”
“For the sake of science moer er blijven worden onderzocht. Wij als egoïstische
mensen kunnen voor om [sic] niet genoeg proefdieren hebben”
“Donders mooi!
Ik voel me god o:)”
“Het idee vind ik wel tof. Als je zo minder voedsel in de vis hoeft te pompen voor
dezelfde hoeveelheid vismassa lijkt me dat wel gunstig :)”
“Ik ben blij dat ik erachter ben gekomen toch nog nieuw leven op de wereld kan
zetten, maar ik vind dat hun muzieksmaak te wensen over laat.”
“Bubbles en blubje!”
“Zo jong als jullie zijn, zo pril, so onschuldig. Dit afscheid valt ons zwaar. Lieve,
Ooms &Yoeri, het ga jullie goed! Xxx
Mama Bri & Mama Melissa.
Ps. Niet vergeten, ook als vis: NOAD!”
“Je bent hier bezig met een levend/levensvatbaar wezen. Je weet niet hoeveel last ze
hiervan ondervinden. Naast het fit dat ze zoiezo [sic] worden gedood. Zeer slechte
zaak! Vind ik heel erg om te horen!”
“Ik vind dat dit voor mij te ver gaat.
Voor mij is het een levend wezen. En wat voor systeem heeft het voor het
ecosysteem? Kan de natuurlijke balans verstoren.”
“Ik vind kakkerlakken smerig en ik houd niet van kunst met levende dieren.”
“Ik voel me rot voor de zebravis, maar in oorlog & wetenschap is alles geoorloofd”
“Supercool live experiment!”
“Veel succes, met dit onderzoek ik hoop dat je veel mag ‘laten’leven. Hoop doet
leven!
Ivan”
“Ok, this is the strangest thing I’ve encountered so far. An aquarium hooked up to
some solarpanel, with some array of knobs connected in turn to speakers spitting out
random noise lured me into thinking I was going 2 play w/UFOS and other
assignable [?] audio gizmo. Next thing I know mr. Woodstock tells me about what I
can do with the machine, makes music with me and it’s all looking rather hippyesque and innocent at this stage. Maybe a bit on the weird side but w/e.
So. Playtime is over.
There are embryos in the tank. With fish. Injected w/ algae. Some dna
reprogramming going on, though highly doubtful and experimental. But the off
chance that through injection in embryonic state, better fish will evolve.
Sounds cool. But wait, if this succeeds, even on a host-level [?], where they we’re
[sic] to be independent and mutually beneficial…what’s next?
Starts out like fun and games,
But if you can’t predict the consequences (to the fullest extent) what and how will
you knowwhat you’ll be doing to any type of organism? (like say…humans
or..poultry.. Same diff.really)
Er yeah.. I got a bit of a mixed and conflicted feeling on an ethical level.
This comes to mind: you shouldn’t adopt to a change until you know what
consequences it will bring for the next generations. That’s a long time. By native
American standards but also for our fast paced time. Think Einstein had the same in
mind for the bomb.
I’m not a hippy..
But just think about it..
It’s all fun and games, but you’ll never know what it can do in the p.t.b’s
a.k.a.n.w.o.’s hands [Powers that be also known as new world order?]
Yay’n ting [?]
X Josje ([email protected])
Ps: I do love play creative stuff. But way too cautious I guess.”
“Blij dat ik een bijdrage heb kunnen leveren aan de wetenschap.”
“Supertof! Awesome!”
“Very, very nice!”
“Coooool! But maybe they grow better in the hottub?
[email protected]
[email protected]
very interesting ! :)
&say hello to your son,
I wish him lots of fun with the xbox 360 kinect!
Groetjes Pippi & Donna”
“Biologie, leuk maar niet op school!
Groetjes uit België
Matthy”
“Het was weer even terug in de schoolbanken
Martijn”
“Alles is super klein, grappig!
Yvon”
“Veel succes Berry! Zet hem op in je nieuwe leven”
“Voorzichtig!!!”
“Ai ai hier worden monsters gemaakt”
“Alles voor voedsel.
Diervriendelijk vlees bestaat niet maar dieren van eigen productie is okee”
“Leuk!”
“Toon de Jong
Erg interessant, leuk om zelf eens te doen”
“Marjolein
Erg leuk om de kakkerlakken uit te dagen en goed zien hoe ze reageren. Goed
werk!”
“Helemaal te gek! Laat me weten wanneer we onzichtbaar-vliegende-op zonneenergie-werkende vissen kunnen verwachten!
Tobias”
“Wij vonden het leuk om te doen, en erg leerzaam, al begrijpen we nog niet volledig
hoe het werkt. En wat er in de “geluidbak”gebeurt.
Puck&Bobby”
“When Adam injected the cockroach and I watched it convulse slowly into death, I
found that disturbing. Eh!”
“Voor een vakblad (bionieuws) zou ik graag wat extra info willen. Zou je contact
kunnen opnemen met [email protected]’
“Leuke ervaring om aan de wetenschap te hebben deelgenomen. Mooi om te werken
met deze microscopische technieken.”
“ Fantastisch project. It makes you think about the World around you.”
“Ik voel me fucking doofenschmirtz ZEBRAVISSINATORRr”
“Supergaaf! Voel me net een vissen god :) “
“Hoe is het met je vis?”
“Ik hoop dat ik het zebravisje niet doodgestoken heb…Was leuk om eens te doen!”
“Leuk om een keer gedaan te hebben!”
“Bijzonder interessant project erg inventief om vissen van de zon te laten leven. Ik
ben benieuwd of het experiment echt gaat lukken en de visjes en de blauwalg samen
1 organisme worden.
Suze”
“Superboeiend, raar, & niet te doen mijn vriendin vond t zielig voor t visje :)”
“It’s like Skrillex”
“Leuk om een keer te doen, maar gelukkig waren mijn eitjes al dood.”
“Het was best bizar”
“Arme embryo’s, ik hoop dat ze snel zonne-energie gaan maken”
“Ik snap er niks vam…”
“het was frappant maar toch leuk, ze hebben nu ook een mooi huis.
‘het was wel lastig met mikken.’ Xoxox Alexander van het.”
“Ik vond dit vaag…daag. –m-“
“Ik vind dat planten eigenschappen en dier/mens niet gemixed hoeven te worden for
the sake of. ’t Zou ’n ander verhaal zijn worden als er een doel achter zou zitten (met
verbetering) maar knutselen met de bouwstenen gaat iets te ver, dieren en planten
leven al theoretisch in harmony (praktijk hebben we helaas verprutst) maar deze
interactie is voor mij niet nodig.”
“erg interessant en leuk om te doen. Het is altijd leuk omnieuwe dingen te
ontdekken.”
“Great to see some science around here! I hope I created an ogre or something :-)”
“Wow! That was exciting! I’m wondering how my fish will be when it’s bigger! :)”
“Bio energetic vibes, magnificient!”
Appendix 4 –
Mosterdzaadjes :: Mustard Seeds (in Dutch and English)
Mosterdzaadjes: Kruismutagenese in het Errorarium
Een korte omschrijving van het Errorarium
Het Errorarium is een audio-fotonisch verrijkingsterrarium dat bedoeld is om
gemuteerde organismen te herbergen, en om hen te testen met fotosynthetische en
geluids-interacties. De synthesizer, die licht en geluid maakt, heeft heel wat knoppen
waar je aan kunt draaien om de omgeving van de groeiende plantjes te veranderen.
Denk je dat je de plantjes in het Errorarium een plezier doet, of een hoop stress
bezorgt met jouw eigen amusement? En waarom denk je dat?
Het Errorarium is het antwoord van een artiest op Bio-solar Cells, een in Nederland
gevestigd wetenschappelijk onderzoeksconsortium dat zich bezighoudt met het
verbeteren van fotosynthese door genetische modificatie van algen en andere
planten. Door de variabelen (licht, geluid) in het Errorarium te veranderen, maak je
het experiment niet-reproduceerbaar, en moeilijk te gebruiken. Je merkt ook dat je
dingen vindt die buiten het bereik van de huidige wetenschap liggen.
Daartoe maakt het Errorarium een breed spectrum aan chaotisch kunstlicht en geluid
door alle variabelen zoveel mogelijk te variëren (“door de jazz variabiliteit te
maximaliseren”) in ons artistieke kasje. We hopen dat de betekenissen kwalitatief
van aard zullen zijn en buiten de mogelijkheid vallen van kennis als een rol om tot
meer verfijning te komen.
Credits:
Errorarium Design: a Zaretsky/Juday/Edwards Collaboration
Architecture & Fabrication: Mason Juday http://masonyte.com/
Errorarium
Errorarium Experimental Light Synthesizer Engineer: Pete Edwards of Casper
Electronics http://casperelectronics.com/
Een korte beschrijving van de Zandraket (Arabidopsis thaliana)
Deze soort is het plantaardige werkpaard van de moleculaire biologie. Het is een
onkruid uit de familie van de kruisbloemen, waartoe ook de mosterd behoort. Het is
een klein, snelgroeiend plantje, en het eerste waarvan het hele genoom bekend is.
Zandraket wordt gebruikt in allerlei experimenten die daarna worden uitgevoerd op
bekende voedselplanten zoals rijst, maïs, tarwe en kafferkoren. Verder wordt
Arabidopsis thaliana gebruikt bij de productie van plantaardige geneesmiddelen,
plastics en energie.
Ontmoet de Mutanten
In het Errorarium groeien zes geselecteerde mutanten van Arabidopsis thaliana,
namelijk UFO, Li-2:1, Agamous, Apetala, Pin and Bil-5.
Deze mutanten zijn niet gericht genetisch gemodificeerd. Ze zijn zonder speciale
ontwikkelingsprogramma’s gemaakt, maar zijn ontstaan door ‘chemo-teratologie’,
dat wil zeggen dat hun zaden met chemicaliën zijn vergiftigd. Elk type mutant heeft
een verschillend fenotype (uiterlijk).
Een beschrijving van de mutanten in het Errorarium
UFO-2:
UFO-2 (Unusual Floral Organs of ‘bijzondere bloemvormen’) hebben een gen met
een onbekende functie dat het aantal, de rangschikking en het uiterlijk van delen van
de bloem beïnvloedt . Na behandeling met EMS, een chemisch mutagen dat
puntmutaties veroorzaakt, hebben UFO-2 planten mozaïek-organen (gemengde
mannelijke en vrouwelijke voortplantingsorganen), een gereduceerd aantal
bloemblaadjes en meeldraden (de ‘penis’ van de plant), en gereduceerde mannelijke
vruchtbaarheid. De planten zijn meestal vrouwelijk en niet tweeslachtig.
Li-2:1:
Li2:1 is de afkorting voor een mutant die ook Almost Glabra (’ Bijna kaal’) wordt
genoemd. Het is een vrouwelijke plant met gezaagde bladranden en erg weinig
haartjes.
Ag-3:
Agamous (‘zonder voortplanting’) heeft een gemuteerde versie van het ‘homeosis’
gen (dat het bloemplan verandert, niet te verwarren met homo-erotisch). De mutatie
zit op een gen op het midden van chromosoom 4, dat codeert voor een eiwit dat de
groeipunten in de bloem beïnvloedt. Agamous heeft soms 4 kelkbladen en 9-10
kroonbladen, waarna een nieuwe bloem zich ontwikkelt met 4 of minder
kroondbladen, afgewisseld met 10 of minder kroonbladen. Soms vertoont het
groeiweefsel vlakke vergroeiingen (‘fasciatie’). Zowel mannelijke als vrouwelijke
organen zijn vaak steriel. Onder goede omstandigheden heeft de plant een lichte
voorkeur voor kruisbestuiving. Agamous planten produceren soms bloemen met
meer dan 2 vruchtbladen.
Apetala:
Apetala heeft gemuteerde kroonbladen en is gekweekt door ABRC, de Arabidopsis
Biological Research Center, zie http://abrc.osu.edu/. Ze hebben een afwijkend gen
dat codeert voor een MADS-box eiwit dat het bloemplan en het groeiweefsel van de
bloem beïnvloedt. Apetala heeft schutbladachtige kelkbladen, en meestal geen
kroonbladen. In plaats daarvan heeft deze mutant secundaire bloemetjes binnenin de
bloem ... ook zonder kroonbladen
Pin-5:
Pin-5 of Pinformed (‘Speldeknopvormig’) heeft een groter aantal kelk- en
kroonbladen, die vaak met elkaar vergroeid zijn, maar ze hebben vaak en kleiner
aantal meeldraden, en meestal slechts één vruchtblad. Deze mutant is geïsoleerd uit
de mutant L-er met behulp van EMS, een chemisch vergif.
Bil-5:
Bil-5 heeft gemiddelde tot grote rozetten met veel bladeren, die langwerpig zijn, met
lange bladstelen, en lepelvormig (hol) met een asymmetrische omtrek, en met
vrijwel gladde bladranden; ze bloeien laat (koudebehandeling van de rozetten
bevordert vroegere bloei), met talrijke okselstandige bloeiwijzen; de plant is 4553cm hoog. Dit type wordt bewaard door ABRC.
Online Dating met Mutanten: ontmoet uw favoriete type
De kunstenaar voelde zich aangetrokken tot de beschrijving en de foto’s van deze
mutanten. De kunstenaar wilde stiekem dat de mutanten zouden kruisen in het
Errorarium. Daarom hebben we de mutanten uitgenodigd om tijd met ons door te
brengen. De uitnodigingen, die u hieronder kunt lezen, zijn geschreven in een
“online dating”stijl met een berekenende romantiek.
We hebben ook fruitvliegjes (Drosophila melanogaster) betrokken bij de Errorariuminstallatie. Drosophila melanogaster is Grieks voor donkerbuikige dauwliefhebber:
!"#$%& = dauw, '()%& = liefhebber, "*)+& = donkergekleurd, ,+$-." = buik. Deze
vliegjes zijn de ‘werkpaarden’ in de moleculaire biologie van de insecten. Hun
genoom is ’gesequenced’ en er zijn vele gemuteerde variëteiten beschikbaar in het
lab. De fruitvliegjes die u hier kunt zien zijn van het wildtype. Ze zijn uitgenodigd
om te werken als vrijwilliger in het Errorarium, tegen een vergoeding met oud fruit...
hun lievelingseten. Zonder deze minuscule fruitvliegjes zouden de meeste planten
van Arabidopsis thaliana zichzelf bevruchten. Maar met de hulp van de Drosophila’s
forceren we vermenging van deze vreemde, ‘off the locus’ lichamen en genitaliën
van florale noviteiten. Door middel van kruismutagenese in het Errorarium sporen
we het kruisen tussen deze afwijkingen aan, en creëren we zaden van gemixte
deformaties.
Gedichten voor de bloemen van Chemo-Teratologie – de studie van monsters en
gedrochten
Een online bericht aan UFO-2
Je lijkt echt in harmonie te zijn met de natuur. Ik vind je genitale stoofpotje enorm
gaaf en ik zou graag je mozaïeke bestuivers proeven. Aangezien je een “Unusual
Floral Organ” stam bent, lijk je ook een extroverte introvert (of misschien een
introverte extrovert). Hoe dan ook, volgens mij ben je iemand die van binnen uit
explodeert van de energie, maar zonder dat je een uitlaatklep hebt voor die vreemde
“ongewone florale organen”-energie. Maar je lijkt me ook nog ongelofelijk cool! –
AZ
Een online bericht aan Li-2:1:
Hoi, Almost Glabra (‘Bijna Kaal’), je ziet er ongelofelijk uit, ik moest je gewoonweg
groeten. Ik zal direct met de deur in huis vallen aangezien ik een hekel heb aan tijd
verspillen en dat jou ook niet aan wil doen. Dinsdagnacht verblijf ik voor mijn werk
in Leiden, in het Mayflower Hotel, en ik zou je heel graag hier hebben voor een
beetje haarloos plezier. Het is erg vervelend om alleen in een hotel te verblijven, en
het zou een eer zijn om in plaats daarvan met jou te zijn. Je hebt leuke gekartelde
bladranden. Laat het me weten adam
Een online bericht voor Ag-3:
Hoi Agamous, ik studeer kunst en niet-menselijke psychologische ontwrichting dus
ik vind je gekke verneukte bloemen leuk. Heb je wel eens poëzie van Charles
Baudelaire gelezen? Je lijkt me cool en ik zou graag meer over je weten, zoals je
naam. Dr. Z
Een online bericht voor Apetala:
Dus, Apetala, ik zal eerlijk met je zijn, ik vind je schattig maar ik ben op dit moment
voornamelijk op zoek naar iets lichamelijks, dus als dat niet je ding is heb ik geen
zin om je tijd te verspillen. Ik vind je schutbladachtige kelkbladen ok maar ik denk
dat je gebrek aan bloemblaadjes de reden voor mijn reactie was.
Een online bericht aan Pin-5
Na een kort maar rigoureus onderzoek van jouw profiel, wilde ik je laten weten dat
ik in mijn geest al met je getrouwd en van je gescheiden ben, al heb je een zeer
goede muzikale smaak
Het aantal kelk- en bloembladen zijn bij jou
vermeerderd maar ik vond dat de vaak verwarrende fusie van de twee niet kon
compenseren voor het gebrek aan meeldraden en eenzame stampers. Dank je voor
alle spectaculaire verbeelde herinneringen... Ik zal je altijd blijven koesteren in mijn
hart.
Je ex
P.S.: Ik moet helft van je geld krijgen, volgens het huwelijkscontract.
P.P.S.: Je mag de hond houden en ik houd het strandhuis op Hawaii.
Een online bericht aan Bil-5:
Wat een set van rozetten. Jouw verlengde bladstelen... jouw lepelvormige bladen
met enigszins asymmetrische bladranden...jouw vroege bloei.. en je talrijke
okselstandige bloeiwijzen, Bil-5, mijn stampers verlangen naar je aanraking. Stuur
een berichtje! Z
Met dank aan:
Gerda van Uffelen, Sondra Hart en David Louwrier
Ondersteund door:
Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM), The Arts and Genomics
Centre, Universiteit Leiden, Waag Society en BioSolar Cells.
----Mustard Seeds: Cross Mutagenesis in the Errorarium
A brief description of The Errorarium:
The Errorarium is an audio-photonic enrichment terrarium meant to house mutant
organisms and subject them to tests for photosynthetic and sonic engagement. The
light and sound synthesizer has many dials that you can turn to alter the environment
of the growing organisms. Do you think you are enriching or stressing the organisms
in the Errorarium with your mediated entertainment? Why do you believe this?
The Errorarium is an artist’s commentary on Bio-solar Cells, a Netherlands based
scientific research consortium based on increasing photosynthesis through genetic
modification of algae and plants. By changing the variables on the Errorarium, you
are making the experiment non-repeatable and hard to utilize. At the same time, you
are finding variables that are beyond the scope of known research. Therefore, the
Errorarium produces a wide range of chaotic artificial light and sound results by
maximizing jazz variability within the artistic growth chamber. We are hoping that
the meanings are conversational, qualitative and beyond the ability of knowledge to
glean refinement.
Credits:
Errorarium Design: a Zaretsky/Juday/Edwards Collaboration
Errorarium Architecture and Fabrication: Mason Juday
http://masonyte.com/
Errorarium Experimental Light Synthesizer Engineer:
Pete Edwards of Casper Electronics
http://casperelectronics.com/
A brief description of Arabidopsis Thaliana:
Thaliana is the plant workhorse of Molecular Biology. They are designated a weed
of the mustard family, also cruciferous. They grow fast and are small. They were the
first plant to have its genome sequenced. They are used for experiments to then be
tested on crops used as staples like rice, corn, wheat and sorghum. Other industrial
uses of A. Thaliana are plant -based production of pharmaceuticals, plastics and
energy.
Meet the Mutants:
Inside the Errorarium are six choice mutant lines of A. Thaliana known as:
UFO, Li-2:1, Agamous, Apetala, Pin and Bil-5.
These mutants are not designated genetically modified. They were developed
without proper engineering schemes. Instead they were arrived at through ChemoTeratology, which means their seeds were poisoned with chemicals. Each line has a
different phenotype (or body shape.)
A description of each mutant in the Errorarium:
UFO-2:
Unusual Floral Organs 2 plants encode a gene of unknown function that affects
number, arrangement, and identity of floral organs. Isolated by EMS (a chemical
mutagen that causes point mutations) ,UFO-2 has mosaic organs (mixed male and
female genitals), reduced petal and stamen (penis) number andreduced male fertility.
This is a mostly female fertile, non-hermaphroditic plant.
Li-2:1:
Li:2:1 is an abbreviation for a plant mutant line called Almost Glabra. Almost
Glabra is almost a hairless female. Li:2:1 is form of female, at least in the gerund
sense. She has serrated leaf margins and very little hair.
Ag-3:
Agamous has an alternate version of the floral homeotic gene (homeotic is a flower
body plan not to be confused with homoerotic.) The mutation encodes a MADS-box
transcription factor that maps to the middle of chromosome 4 affecting floral
meristem determinacy. Agamous sometimes has 4 sepals, 9-10 petals, then a new
flower forms with 4 or fewer petals alternating with 10 or fewer petals. Flower
meristem sometimes fasciates. Both Male and female are often sterile. Slight
semidominance under healthy conditions for heterozygous agamous plants generate
some flowers with more than 2 carpels.
Apetala:
Apatela is a petal mutant phenotype curated by ABRC, the Arabidopsis Biological
Resource Center. They have a strange floral homeotic and floral meristem identity
gene that encodes a MADS-box transcription factor. Apatela has bract-like sepals,
almost always no petals. Instead it has secondary flowers inside flower… also with
no petals.
Pin-5:
Pin-5 or Pinformed has increased sepal and petal number (often fused) but they often
have reduced stamen number and mostly solitary carpels. Isolated by a chemical
poison called EMS in L-er.
Bil-5:
Bil-5 has medium to large size rosettes with numerous leaves, elongated leaves with
elongated petiols, spoon-shape (concave) leaves with somewhat asymmetric surface,
leaf margins almost smooth, late flowering (vernalization at rosette stage may
promote earlier flowering), numerous axillary inflorescences, height=45-53 cm.
Phenotype curated by ABRC.
Online Dating with Mutant Plants: Hook Up Lines for Lineages
The artist found the description and photographs of these mutants attractive. The
artist secretly wanted the mutants to cross-fertilize inside the Errorarium. For this
reason we have invited the mutants to spend some time with us. The invitations,
below, are in the tone of online dating and involve a calculated romance.
We also incorporate some Drosophila Melanogaster (Greek for dark-bellied dew
lover : #$%&'( = dew, )*+'( = lover, ",+-( = dark-coloured, .-&/0$ = belly) flies
in the Errorarium instalation. Drosophila flies are the workhorses of insect based
molecular biology. Their genome is sequenced and many mutant strains are available
in the lab. These fruit flies or vinegar flies are wild type. They have been invited to
volunteer in the Errorarium with gifts of old fruit… their favorite. Without tiny fruit
flies most Arabidopsis Thaliana self fertilize, but with the help of Drosophila, we
hpe to force the mixing of these odd, off the locus bodies and genitals of floral
novelty. Through Cross Mutagenesis in the Errorarium we hope to encourage the
mating of these aberrations and create seeds of mixed deformations.
Poems to the flowers of Chemo-Teratology:
An online message to UFO-2:
You seem to really be in tune with nature. I really dig genital chowder and would
like to taste your mosaic pollenators. As an Unusual Floral Organ strain, you also
seem like an extroverted introvert (or maybe an introverted extrovert). Either way, I
think you seem like someone who's exploding with energy on the inside, but doesn't
always have the outlet for that unusual floral organ energy. But you totally seem
cool too! -AZ
An online message to Li-2:1:
Hey, Almost Glabra, you look incredible, I had to say hi. I'll get straight to the point
because I hate wasting time and I don't want to waste yours. I'm going to be in
Leiden staying at the Mayflower Hotel Tuesday night on business and I'd love to
have you over for some hairless fun. Staying in a hotel alone sucks, and it would be
an honor to be with you instead. You have some nice serrated leaf margins. Let me
know :) adam
An online message to Ag-3:
Hey Agamous, I study art and non-human psychological disruption so I like your
crazy fucked up flowers. Have you read any of Charles Baudelaire's poetry? You
seem cool and it would stellar to learn more about you, like your name. Dr. Z
An online message to Apetala:
So Apatela, i'm gonna be honest, i think you're cute but i'm primarily looking for
something physical at the moment, so if thats not your thing i don't want to waste
your time. I like bract-like sepals ok but I think your lack of petals is what got me to
respond
An online message to Pin-5:
After a rigorously brief overview of your profile, I wanted to let you know that I've
already married and divorced you in my mind, even though you have great taste in
music :P Your sepal and petal number was increased but I found the often confused
fusion of the two didn’t make up for your reduced stamen number and mostly
solitary carpels. Thanks for all the spectacular imaginary memories... you'll always
have a special place in my heart.
Your ex
P.S.: I am going to need half your money according to our prenup
P.P.S.: You can keep the dog and I'll keep the beach house in Hawaii
An online message to Bil-5:
What a set of rosettes. Your elongated leaves and petiols… your spoon-shaped
leaves with somewhat asymmetric surface leaf margins, your earlier flowering and
your numerous axillary inflorescences, Bil-5, my pistels yearn for your touch.
Message me!
Thanks to:
G. A. van Uffelen, Sondra Hart and David Louwrier
Supported by:
Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM), The Arts and Genomics
Centre, Leiden University, Waag Society and BioSolar Cells.
Appendix 5 –
Complexity Is – Published in French La Mutation Aleatoire N’est Pas Un Mal,
Art et Activisme, Inter, Art Actuel, pg. 62-63, 2011 (In English for the first time
here.)
Hey Adam,
Greetings from the other side. I'm cooking up some fine potions at the
University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA and wanted to throw a taste in
your direction. This summer I'm organizing a series of projects &
events for a 9-day intensive summer institute supported by the
University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA - about 100 miles east of SF
in the delta/central valley region. The program is called "Aquatopia:
the Confluence of Art & Science in the California Watershed" and is
themed around water issues and community/artist/scientist
collaborations. This seems like it could possibly accord with some of
your work. Do you have anything on the burner that deals with water,
water issues, water politics, etc? If you do, send it my way ASAP and
I'll pitch it to the committee so we can bring yer ass out West. The
dates are set for June 5-13. If you are interested I can send you more
details. Please let me know when you have a chance.
Fun & Luck,
Aaron
Aaron Gach
Visiting Asst. Professor
Arts-in-Context
University of the Pacific
Stockton, CA
Aaron,
I would like to collect fresh water microbes and protists and culture them for the
public to see them live and video projected with a homemade video microscope.
I would like to make large mono-cultures or mixed cultures (20-50 2 gallon cultures)
from local samples immersed in boiled and cooled local water and fed well. I would
then like to work with a local scientist on identifying local organic and/or
environmentally available mutagens (i.e. Parsnip juice, local superfund site soil or
melted plastic from behind the recycling center.) These local, 'organic' or at least
readily available environmental thing/stuffs could then be autoclaved or filtered and
then added to the cultures of local microbes. This may induce mutation of these
microbes.
The higher than usual rate of mutation water microbes will then be reintroduced into
the environment without true knowledge of the effects. The humor is activist yet
demonic, nothing new will have been done but the human hand becomes implicated
in rate of mutation alteration.
Phobic reaction to change in general will writhe and take cover behind anti-GMO
(which I support to some extent) but this is organic mutation and mutation from an
environmental toxicology standpoint, locally imbedded in the environment already.
So, the release is not really any different than the status quo (except perhaps in
population size and speed of random genomic aberration.)
Finally... The experimental life forms are wild animacules and they deserve a
fighting chance. I will not bleach them out just because they represent difference.
Let them ferment!!!
I’d just need some glassware, some grass cuttings, a pressure cooker and a video
projector on loan... And some space to let the microbes live! I have a home-made
video microscope!
AZ
To Aaron From the scientist involved:
"I read this proposal last night and I have to say (and I am saying this
with a great deal of restraint) that I do not think much of this. There
is no science here that makes sense to me. There is also no
educational benefit that I can see because the "demonstration" will just
confuse the public and reinforce already deeply held misconceptions
about both how science is done and what science knowledge is. I really
hope that if we mix science and art in your summer program that we mix
GOOD science with GOOD art. This is particularly important for the
College right now as we work to increase public awareness of our very
fine science programs in order to raise money for much needed
facilities. I hate to be so negative on this but this ideas is really
strange in my mind and dangerous."
AZ response:
OK, just to start, bioartists are not soft representatives for the public acceptance of
biotech. We have more respect for the public than that. But, we are not angels. Life
is not god. Life is not love. Life is not god. Life is not love. Science is not GOOD,
science is amoral or it is bad science. Art, as a practice, may have a similar pretext,
with the subtraction that aesthetics provides. Beauty is not only not GOOD, but by
necessity beauty is less GOOD than objectivity as it seeks pleasant experience at any
cost (kitsch.) The worst thing for both projects would be a romantic kitsch version of
both art and biology. Neither of us just want to advertise for technoheaven, that is
not a panacea either of our camps can promise.
There are two myths to dis-spell about my project:
-Everything Humans Touch is Not Sin.
If we alter and reintroduce we are vamping nature... Human assumptions of
command and control may just be stupid humans dreaming like an infant of power.
But, we cannot kill the vital force of the universe, bioenergy is perpetual motion,
indefatigable and certain to reign beyond the presence of homo sapiens sapiens. Our
projects of aesthetically engineering all new life for the fickle marketplace can only
end up as a dream of suicide. Perhaps it is a human trait to hurt ourselves as the way
towards proving our ultimate lack of omnipotence. But, contrary to much deep
ecological popular opinion, mutation is not evil.
Mutation occurs regularly. There is always danger in change. But there is always
change. Fear of change is not something to protect the public from. Not if you
believe in evolution. And fear of change caused by 'nature' vrs. 'culture' could be
read as a very religious distinction. It is as if there is a quiet and unsaid consensus
among humanist, anthropocentric, naturalist, post-christian feelgood pop culture that
"the end of the world" should come as an act of nature or by dint of demon
antichrist crimes against humanity by the Other, not the clean machine of science or
culture or everyday acts of being USman.
Breeding plants and animals in the name of human will and desire is not a new
project (look at human rituals of dating, competitive orchids, 4H and glowfish.com)
Living without enacting change is not an organism's option. Choosing directions for
the channels of life are as simple as, what do you eat>? What is a pest worth
killing>? What kills you and your kind>? Who is not of your kind that you find
value in protecting>? And, eventually, how can we use technology to influence the
results of life's effervescent crap-shoot in our favor.
But, quietly... How do we know the future, without belief in prophets, enough to not
hurt ourselves with our incomplete wisdom and our awesome intelligence? Various
risk assessments compete for air-time. One, corporate biotech, is the in the risk
minimization business. Another, anti-GMO grassroots is in the risk maximization
business. This project sort of makes fun of the anthropocentric assumptions of both
camps. Biotech is greedy, the project of biology is only as greedy as the research
pool. Organic food is high tech... and a proven hearty tech that tastes better and is
more complex than corporate multinational AGri production of monoculture pablum.
Human health has been aided by new tech advanced by biological research, so has
carcinogenic superfund sites from the same funders of these research projects (i.e.
GE (General Electric) and the fMRI vrs Dioxin risk/benefit analysis)
But, is mutation natural? Is an organic mutagen less dangerous? Is an organic
mutagen natural until a human uses it in an experiment in organismic alteration?
Are humans and their cultural drives natural or are we still part of something beyond
primate: special, different, better? Don't underestimate the public's ability to
understand the complexity of a project like Organic Mutagenesis. If we write up the
real issues of mutation, mutation rates, cosmic radiation, random misreads and
parsnip fields, the public can handle it.
Lay people are not stupid. Sometimes it is the highly trained who miss the
pertinence of complexity in everyday living. The importance of fostering debate
means not deciding for the public what counts as real but inciting time for reflection,
re-orientation and self-cognition. We are not experts for the public to nod at.
Instead, we should be presenters of real complexity for public debate. Is Biology not
the study of life? Biology is not a one-sided political reading of life but life in all its
nuanced interconnections, variations and alterations. Yes, my project is upsetting, as
art often is.
-Random Mutation is not Evil.
Mutation occurs naturally at an unsteady rate, influenced by various anomalies in all
variety of the physical miraculous. Visualize: you are a flask, a fleshy incubator and
your body houses many times more bacteria than you have cells in your body. If
coffee is a mutagen, (which it is, along with cigarettes, alcohol and ultrasound) and
one was to consume some of this coffee substance, one is then shitting out
genetically modified organisms. In particular, many scientists tend to see any
application of Random mutation without a screening for utility, (i.e. No Use Value)
conjoined with an intentional release as sounding dangerous. This goes back to
repressed versions of original sin or the fall-back plan of getting into heaven.
Presupposing that de-godified religion, watered down with materialism and
engineering is humanist; random play and lack of knowledge is animal and therefore
ill informed.
Consider this: eating parsnips (which contain a mutagen that can cause point
mutations) is not considered bioterrorism. The truth is, the FDA and the EPA cannot
prophesize any better that David Koresh. Risk assessment is a gamble, that’s why
it’s called risk. Attempts at eliminating risk are also dangerous as lack of any action
can often lead to demise. There is an essential risk to being here. The odds of
anything detrimental coming from the random mutagenesis of some local protists by
some local parsnips are slim... Infinitesimal, but not zero. This project may destroy
the world as we know it. The fear of the anarchism of life, unfettered is greater in
mass perception than the effect of rogaine on the mites that live on your scalp or
vitamin A supplements from the health food store or birth control pill estrogen
remnants in urine samples. If I proposed to add rogaine to some of the flasks or
vitamin A or some norplant dust would I be inciting fear of genetic difference?
Genetic alteration happens. That’s how we came from worms and now have nose
hair and toe nails and notions of importance and adolescent love of life. Utilitarian
mutations are a shot in the dark. We don’t know what the future holds. What is the
genetic effect of transgenic factories keeping so many diabetics alive on insulin
made from million dollar goats and their injectable milk metabolites. I don’t know
and neither does Novartis. I like my diabetic friends and the fact that they don't have
to shoot pig insulin. Still, the net effect of the transgenic project is a grand unknown.
Even our crops and livestock breeding programs represent grand enigmas that are
now part of the environment. My project is simple and deviant yes but my project is
a simple and honest reflection of the generational effects. A finger in the pudding,
out of the lab, risky effecting difference, basis of being alive, inter-organismic
quagmire of ethics and responsibility that humans often reflect on: lay people,
scientists, artists, ethicists and anarchists. To not mutate is a breeding decision. To
breed for utility is an aesthetic decision. To fall in love is an aesthetic breeding
decision. To brush you teeth is a form of bacterial genocide.
The ethics of alteration are not simple, but the technology supplied is not hightech.
People can try organic mutagenesis at home. I would like to work on a text
explaining mutation, organic mutagens, perhaps cancer maps and oncogenesis
caused by toxic waste from our great fortresses of utility and rates of positive
mutation vrs lethal... Followed up by a tour of novel variation in the life world. I
would like to provide a sort of scientific american, do it yourself mutagenesis
instruction kit for the public. I would even like to ask them what they think about
the complex issues of: risk, positive mutation, carcinogenic mutagens in the
environment due to human waste versus amoral sources (like radioactive sources in
geological formations) and the role of the individual responsibility in the design of
future life forms.
But, this is not only science, this is not mere education, this is not simply creative
arts but a living mixture of these three ideals as real and enigmatic organisms,
chemoalterity and, considering the odds, near risk free examples of personalizing the
experience of eco-agnosticism for a populous capable of: abstract thought, respect
for difficult stints of not knowing and with an real ability to decide for themselves.
Organic mutagenesis is a virtually risk free way of experiencing the practice of
modern molecular genetics and going beyond the corporate rhetoric. What is the
anatomy of dementia built into the human desire to meddle? Is this all that is behind
corporate posturing? Little kids with good PR. Angels?
I hope this helps not harms my chances. I feel like protecting the public from
controversy or involvement or accountability or conceptual ability is condescending
and misguided. Complexity is not for the well trained, Complexity IS.
Adam
Appendix 5 –
SAY YES! Presented Mutate or Die, Mutamorphosis II, Tribute to Uncertainty,
Prague, Czech Republic, 2012 Published in Uncertanty Reloaded Digimag
Journal - Issue 74 / Winter 2013, Digicult, pg. 72-75.
SAY YES!
As many of you know,
I am engaged with the issues
of cultural decision making
and the role of biopolitics
in what traits are becoming inherited
by whose gonads…
Biotechnological alteration of the human genome
is refered to this decade as IGM
or the Intentional Genetic Modification
of the Human Genome.
Who is fit to play with doctors?
I want to emphasize that those artists
with disorderly conduct in their repertoire
should always be encouraged to get into the wet lab
and apply their corrosive expressions.
People who manage art and science collaborations,
I encourage you not to censor your queerest artists
For the trouble they may cause the art and science lab relations.
In particular,
artists that work
with real bodies
actual Sex, Blood and Politics
should be given some preference
in any wet lab bioart production.
Erotic artists:
Artists who question sexuality,
engage in alternative versions of pornography
or exhibit off the locus strange attractions
in the realm of erotic behavior
are primed to interface
with new reproductive technologies.
Art-Science Challenge to Sex Activist Creatives: Say yes to Sex
Inserting genes into a hereditary cascade
is a great responsibility
but it is also a powerful, sex act.
In biology,
sex is defined as the passing of genetic information
into a lineage of progeny.
So, transgenic protocol is sex.
What are the desires and satisfactions
of the experimenter
during the technosexual process
of getting the genes
into the being
to be fucked?
Many tinker with the gonads
of yeast, worms, rats and,
in the case of gene therapy, humans.
What kind of erotic, pornographic
and even deadly economies drive this work?
What is the flavor of the compulsive urge
to control reproduction?
What is the quality
of the scientist’s satisfaction
when shooting a signature
or a graffiti tag
into an unsuspecting life’s form?
How is the humping joy
of defect sex
ameliorated or amped up
through technology?
This is not an easy question
as the economies of techno-sex
and sadism as an energy
are not simply negative in the world.
We can’t pretend that technology
is without a certain connectivity
or that life isn’t driven by libido.
What kind of sex
is interspecies genegunning?
How is the perverted act of shooting nuclei
with genetic choices
made to seem formally neutered of hotness?
This is not just a psycho-symbolic mutation.
I am reminded of a line
from Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein
when the scientist tells Igor,
“You Can’t Know Life,
Until You Have Fucked Death
In The Gall Bladder.”
Fertility clinics
and clinical gene therapy trials
are centers of biological pornography
or bioporn.
These command and control centers
Working towards the re-engineering
of the germline need to feel the heat
of their cryo-fertility cult
in a way that
only
dancers of fuck can remind them.
Say Yes to Sex
If people, bags of gonads
(and their next of kin or preborn dish babies)
can be dosed, infected and altered
with the aesthetics
of the corporate, military and health regimes…
then pervert technology
is appropriate technology.
Live Artists:
(or those Biological bodies who enact endurance as their art.)
Artists who use their own bodies
or the freely given bodies of their collaborators
as canvases
are in a very special position
to comprehend the difference
between traditional art forms
and the living manipulation of
Biology as art.
I am advocating
for the celebration of
performance artists in labs
artists interested in
radical body modification
(tattooing, scarification, amputation and implantation),
endurance
(pushing personal metabolism into altered states of expression)
and body fluids
(shit, blood, sperm, vomit, urine and tears, to name a few).
The fracking of heritage genomes
through mutagenesis is an art
of enduring fragmentation and uncertainty.
Art-Science Challenge to Body in Performance Creatives: Say Yes to Mutation
Most random mutation causes instability
and harm to organisms.
Only very occasionally does a mutant worm
grow elbows like we did.
A life’s fitness is a lucky oddity
subject to uncertain futures.
The poetry of chance DNA
upsets the stability of life’s
repetitive anatomy with
changes over time.
Directed {e}volution
is just as fallible in the long run.
What is the difference
between letting the production of life
be spontaneous collage,
versus an aesthetic based on maximizing
short term market shares,
‘enhancing’ traits based on human goals
and using organisms as production factories
for pharmaceuticals, industrial products and food?
When it comes to transgenic art it is preferable
to gamble in the dark with another’s heredity
or to try to tailor someone and their kindred?
Say Yes to Mutation
And an Aesthetics beyond intention: mutation alone
Body artists and manipulators
are in a privileged place
of being able to volunteer
for experimentation without usury
(using of others as a scape goat for
one’s own fear of loss.)
Like any adult informed human subject,
performance artists work on the assumption
that they can handle their shit,
honor their decisions
even with trauma and regret.
That is good,
because most germline human
transgenic experiments
are currently irreversible failures.
(There is the simple question of personal or group alteration infecting the ecosphere
and the responsibility that artists have to not cause ecological instability with their
uncertain affects.)
Political Artists: Bio-power Critics
Those who take action against
Commercial and military regimes
And foment resistance to
Technoslavery, war mongering
And neocolonialist greed
Tend not to trust big science
Not just because of the use of reason’s
historic complicity
With weapons development
Enslavement Criminology
and parochial medical diagnoses:
Anomalous Gender,
Disturbances of Mental Health,
And Personal Genomics
For the patching up of any and all
Social Dis-ease or power-deformity.
Art-Science Challenge to Agitation Propaganda Activist Creatives: Say Yes to
Control’s Drift
Control itself
is a conduct disorder
calcified…
turned to bone dry habit.
This is what Donna Harraway
calls the ‘hardening of the catagories
(referencing the corporeal hardening of the arteries
but in a corporate-state body.)
Command becomes Tradition
But control is prerecorded jazz
Not improvisation, free play or noise.
Nonetheless, control drifts,
like gene expression patterns drift
across past and future space time.
All culture emanates from cults
Surrounded for now
by biopolitical walls.
But the walls of rigor
and policed repetition-compulsion
originate in experimental play, surprise
and even barely shrouded
base materialism of all high society:
murder, rape, incest, pedophilia,
war, xenophobia, orgy,
cannibalism, necrophilia,
beastiality, coprophilia
and any and all monomaniacal obsession.
All of these deep time taboos
are our founder effects
for the psyche and soma
and we presently live in them.
An antisocial reading of normative ethics
rests the case studies at the foot of the
military-industrial human breeding clinic:
Third Millennium Eugenics –
people as Transgenic Compulsions
Tactical media artists,
Agitation propaganda artists
And aesthetic terrorists
Say Yes to Control’s Drift
You should have more clearance
Not less
to use participatory investigation
and know first hand, the scheme, I mean the science
behind incarceration,
allopathic drug pipelines
weapons development
and the programmed human.
What better place to enact
an activist response to
the business of biopolitical
tracking, trapping and tagging
forced individuality
then from the very labs from which these
technologies of control emanate.
A wish
This goes out to the political artists
The penitent and un-penitent body artists
The sex positive and sex critical arms of staged kink
And the people who control the flow of art and lab interface funds
Let those artists
who inhabit labs
be those artists
who approach boundaries
of sex, blood and politics
in a difficult way.
This is because bio-art
is not VR (virtual reality)
Say Yes to Queer Anatomy:
Beware the naïve optimism
of Human Enhancement
Hereditary gene collage
makes new breeds from desires.
Transgenic beings are better art than art.
These organisms are not on canvas
or chiseled out from marble,
transgenic organisms are sculpted
from molecular collage.
Organisms made from snips of other beings
cut into novel entities.
What is the full range
of forms and beings
we could force evolve ourselves into?
Some Transhumanist style tends towards
naïve optimism based on futurist potentials, emphasizing:
longer life span,
more beauty
and bigger brains.
Where can fringe anatomical
and metabolic goals take us,
beyond enhancement?
Perfectionism causes
more sadness than mortal ruin.
Being is a leaky process
Love of Disorder is a love of this world,
So, refuse to reject the incongruity of space-time
Say Yes to Queer Anatomy
The issues are not contained
by the social
as it is currently drawn.
The issues of life art
are long lasting,
multigenerational
and potentially continual.
Say Yes to Queer Anatomy
Appendix 6 –
Bipolar Flower Vector Maps: David Lourier
Give a description of the buildup of the whole DNA construct that has been used in
the modification process. Please give the origin and the functionality of all parts of
the construct.
Anwer:
[The whole construct is meant, that has been used to modify the plant. If a
vector has been used, you should describe the origin and the function of the vector
and the insert, using a vector map. Also mention if there are parts that code for a
toxic compound.]
2 different constructs, both coding for a Zincfinger have been inserted by means of
the vector Agrobacterium tumefaciens (the hypervirulent kind Agl-1), in a floral dip.
The construct is controlled by the promoter of ribosomal protein gene RPS5A. The
name of the Zincfinger is 16VD, and has as a binding domain: GTA GAG GAG.
The used expression vectors are a modified version of the pGPTV-KAN vector
(Becker et al., 1992).
The two different constructs are: pRF-VP16-3F, fused with the VP16 activation
domain en a Hygromicine resistance gene. pRF-EAR-3F is fused with the repressor
domain EAR and the Kanamycin resistance gene.
Figuur 1: schematic representation of the Construction of the 3F ZF- ATF.
(Lindhout et al., 2006).
(a) The Zinkfinger (ZF) domains are cloned in the T-DNA vector pRF-KAN_VP16
and pRF-HYG_EAR, between the VirF locus and VP16 or EAR, under the promoter
RPS5A (also known as AML1-Prom C/G).
Orgigins:
The pRF vecor is a modified pGPTV vector. The pGPTV vector is derived from the
binary plant vector pBIN19, from a Agrobacterium vector.
Zinkfingers: Synthetically constructed.
VP16: Activation domain, originally from the herpes simplex virus.
EAR: ERF-associated amphiphilic repression (EAR) motif. Naturally occuring in
Arabidopsis ZFs.
RPS5A promoter: Naturally ocurring in Arabisopsis and controls the expression of
the ribosomal protein S5A.
ATG: Synthetic
FLAG tag: Synthetic
SV40 nuclear localization signal:Coding for a nuclear localization signal. Originally
from the Simian virus 40, a polyomavirus, found in humans and monkeys,
XhoI– SacI fragment :codes for the 37 C-terminal amino acids of the VirF protein.
Originally from the octopine strain of Agrobacterium tumefaciens.
Nos terminator (tNOS): Originally from Agrobacterium tumefaciens.
Hygromicine: An antibiotic, originally found in Streptomyces hugroscopicus. The
resistance gene hygromycin phosphotransferase (hpt) comes originally from
Escherichia coli but has been modified for plant transformations.
Kanamycine: A antibiotic, originally found in Streptomyces kanamyceticus. The
resistance genes NPTII and NPTIII come originally from the bacterial strain
Escherichia coli K12. NPTIII has been used as a selection marker in the growth of
the vector in E.coli.
Appendix 6 – The Permit for Introducing GMOs into the Environment
(Original Dutch and google translator version of English.)
AANVRAAGFORMULIER INTRODUCTIE IN HET MILIEU:
tentoonstelling van ggo’s
Indien u vragen heeft kunt u contact opnemen met Bureau GGO (email:
[email protected], telefoon: 030-2744197).
Alle gevraagde gegevens op dit formulier zijn openbaar. Vertrouwelijke informatie
dient in een aparte bijlage meegezonden te worden.
Het aanvraagformulier omvat vragen die mogelijk niet van toepassing zijn voor uw
aanvraag. U wordt vriendelijk verzocht de onderdelen die geen betrekking hebben op
de aan te vragen werkzaamheden NIET in uw aanvraag op te nemen.
INHOUDSOPGAVE
1.
ALGEMENE GEGEVENS
2.
GEGEVENS OVER HET UITGANGSMICRO-ORGANISME
3.
GEGEVENS OVER DE GENETISCHE MODIFICATIE
4.
GEGEVENS OVER HET GGM
5.
GEGEVENS OVER HET UITGANGSORGANISME
6.
GEGEVENS OVER DE GENETISCHE MODIFICATIE
7.
GEGEVENS OVER HET GGO
8.
GEGEVENS OVER HET UITGANGSPLANTENSOORT
9.
GEGEVENS OVER DE GENETISCHE MODIFICATIE
10.
GEGEVENS OVER DE GENETISCH GEMODIFICEERDE PLANT
11.
GEGEVENS OVER DE VOORGENOMEN TENTOONSTELLING
12.
VOORGESTELDE METHODEN VAN OBSERVATIE TIJDENS EN NA
DE TENTOONSTELLING
13.
ANALYSE VAN DE TE VERWACHTEN EFFECTEN VAN DE GGOS OP
MENS EN MILIEU
INTERNET
http://bggo.rivm.nl
AFKORTINGEN
Regeling
ggo
Regeling genetisch gemodificeerde organismen
Genetisch Gemodificeerd Organisme
1.
ALGEMENE GEGEVENS
1.1. Titel van de aanvraag
Antwoord: Openbare tentoonstelling van een mini ecosysteem bestaande uit
gemodificeerde planten, dieren en micro-organismen.
1.2. Geef een korte inhoudelijke beschrijving van de aanvraag.
Antwoord:
[Gevraagd wordt een beschrijvende titel, die voldoende informatie geeft over het
doel van de voorgenomen toepassing. Bijvoorbeeld: ‘kleinschalige proeven met nietbloeiende genetisch gemodificeerde appelbomen waarbij een gen coderend voor een
anti-microbiëel eiwit (hordothionine) is ingebracht. Door de genetische modificatie
wordt beoogd een verhoogde resistentie van de appelbomen tegen bepaalde plantpathogene schimmels te bewerkstelligen.]
1.3. Geef een beschrijving van de voorgenomen werkzaamheden.
Antwoord: In een speciaal ontworpen ingeperkte container worden
gemodificeerde planten, micro-organismen en zebravis embryo’s tentoongesteld. De
ingeperkte container wordt het Errorarium genoemd. Het publiek kan hier
omstandigheden veranderen: geluiden en belichting. Een wildtype Arabidopsis
thaliana (Col-0) wordt behandeld met kunstmatige transcriptiefactoren met
zinkvingers om een verandering in gen-expressie te veroorzaken. 2 verschillende
constructen van een zinkvinger worden ingebracht door middel van de vector
Agrobacterium tumefaciens (de hypervirulente stam Agl-1), in een floral dip onder
controle van de promoter van ribosomal protein gene RPS5A .
[Geef hier een uitgebreide, gedetailleerde beschrijving van de
werkzaamheden]
1.4.
Geplande aanvangsjaar.
Antwoord: (maart) 2013
1.5. Verwachte eindjaar.
Antwoord: (september) 2013
1.6. Wilt u informatie vertrouwelijk houden? Zo ja, geef een motivering die
concreet aangeeft welke nadelige gevolgen openbaarmaking van deze informatie
voor uw concurrentiepositie heeft.
Antwoord: Nee
[Alle informatie die in de aanvraag en de bijlagen wordt verstrekt kan, voor zover
deze niet als vertrouwelijk is aangemerkt, bij de openbare ter inzage legging van de
aanvraag en de (ontwerp) beschikking openbaar worden gemaakt.
Van als vertrouwelijk aangemerkte onderdelen moet een openbare samenvatting
worden verstrekt, waarin voldoende informatie staat voor een goed algemeen begrip
van de aanvraag. Tevens moet een motivatie worden ingediend waarin
beargumenteerd wordt waarom bepaalde informatie als vertrouwelijk wordt
aangemerkt.]
DOEL VAN DE INTRODUCTIE IN HET MILIEU
1.7. Specifiek doel van de werkzaamheden die worden aangevraagd.
Antwoord: Het publiek in het museum kennis laten maken met genetisch
gemodificeerde organismen. De planten , dieren en micro-organismen zullen als
basis dienen voor een impuls van het maatschappelijke debat rond de maakbaarheid
van levende organismen en de Biobased Economy. Zie hiervoor de bijlage.
[Het specifieke doel van het project: bijvoorbeeld het testen van resistentie
van ziekteresistentie tegen pathogeen x]
1.8. Algemeen doel van de werkzaamheden die worden aangevraagd.
Antwoord: Het stimuleren van het maatschappelijk debat.
[Hier wordt het lange termijn doel van de experimenten bedoeld, zoals ‘het
ontwikkelen van ziekteresistentie van appelbomen tegen schimmel- en
bacterieziekten]
VERGUNNINGAANVRAGER
[Met de aanvrager wordt hier uitsluitend de rechtspersoon bedoeld die
eindverantwoordelijk is voor de verrichte werkzaamheden]
1.9.
Naam Rechtspersoon.
Antwoord: Gemeente Museum Den haag
Adres.
Antwoord: Stadhouderslaan 41
Postcode en plaats.
Antwoord: 2517 HV, ‘s Gravenhage
2.
GEGEVENS OVER HET UITGANGSMICRO-ORGANISME
2.1.
Uitgangsmicro-organisme
2.1.1. Welk type micro-organisme betreft het?
Antwoord: Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002
2.1.2. Is het uitgangsmicro-organisme een genetisch gemodificeerd microorganisme?
Nee
2.2.
Beschrijving
Gangbare Nederlandse naam:
Antwoord:
Volledige wetenschappelijke naam:
Antwoord: Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002
Familie:
Antwoord: Chroococcales
Geslacht:
Antwoord: Synechococcaceae
Soort:
Antwoord:
Ondersoort:
Antwoord:
Pathovar:
Antwoord: PCC 7002
Collectienummer:
Antwoord:
Commerciële benaming:
Antwoord:
Overige naamsgegevens:
Antwoord:
2.3.
Geografische verspreiding
2.3.1. In welke habitat/ecosysteem komt uitgangsmicro-organisme van nature of
oorspronkelijk voor?
Antwoord: Tropisch, brak tot zout water. De soort is voor het eerst waargenomen in
magen van vissen, gevangen bij Maguyes Eiland, La Parguera, Puerto Rico.
2.4.
Stofwisselingstype, voortplanting, overleving en verspreiding
2.4.1. Wat is het stofwisselingstype?
Antwoord: photoautotroof, kan ook heterotroof gegroeid worden met glycerol als
substraat.
2.4.2. Speelt het uitgangsmicro-organisme een specifieke rol in biologische of
geochemische processen in de bodem?
Nee
2.4.3. Wat is de groeitemperatuur?
Antwoord: Mesofiel. De optimale groeitemperatuur is 38 graden Celsius.
2.4.4. Beschrijving van de voortplantingswijze:
Antwoord: Deling
2.4.5. Welke overlevings- en verspreidingsstructuren kan het uitgangsmicroorganisme vormen?
Antwoord:Geen
2.4.6. Hoe lang kunnen de overlevings- en verspreidingsstructuren overleven in:
- de natuurlijke/oorspronkelijke habitat?
Antwoord:Onbekend
- in het gebied van introductie?
Antwoord: Onbekend
2.4.7. Biotische en abiotische factoren die van bepalende invloed zijn op
voortplanting, overleving en verspreiding:
Antwoord: Zoutgehalte, licht en temperatuur zijn bepalend voor de overleving en
voortplanting van het organisme.
2.5.
Genetische elementen
2.5.1. Bevat het uitgangsmicro-organisme mobiliseerbare genetische elementen?
Nee, er bevinden zich geen IS en MITE transposable elements in het
genoom. (Lin et al., 2010)
2.5.2. Met welke frequentie treedt mobilisatie op?
Antwoord: :N.v.t.: Zie vraag 2.5.1
2.5.3. Bevat het uitgangsmicro-organisme zelfoverdraagbare elementen?
Nee
2.5.4. Met welke frequentie treedt overdracht op?
Antwoord: N.v.t.
2.5.5. Wat is het gastheerbereik van die elementen?
Antwoord: N.v.t.
2.5.6. Tot welke incompatibiliteitsklasse behoren die elementen?
Antwoord: De incompatibiliteitsklasse lijkt beperkt te zijn tot Synechococcus sp.
PCC 7002 (Akiyama et al., 1998)
2.5.7. Dragen de elementen resistentie genen?
Antwoord: Nee, het uitgangsorganisme ( het wildtype) bevat geen resistentie genen.
2.5.8. Dragen de elementen conjugatieve transposons?
Antwoord: Nee
2.6.
Biologische inperking
2.6.1. Kan het uitgangsmicro-organisme erfelijk materiaal uitwisselen met andere
organismen?
Antwoord: Nee
2.6.2. Is het uitgangsmicro-organisme biologisch ingeperkt?
Ja
Licht toe:
Antwoord: Door de hoge eisen met betrekking tot watertemperatuur en zoutgehalte.
2.7. Pathogene en schadelijke eigenschappen
2.7.1. Is het uitgangsmicro-organisme een pathogeen?
Nee
2.7.1.1.
Zo ja, geef aan,
De klasse van pathogeniteit volgens de COGEM Richtlijnen?
Antwoord:N.v.t.
Is het uitgangsmicro-organisme op basis van de huidige EGrichtlijnen tot bescherming van de gezondheid van mensen, dieren, planten en hun
producten in een bepaalde categorie ingedeeld?
Nee
Beschrijving van de pathogene eigenschappen van het
uitgangsmicro-organisme:
Antwoord: N.v.t.
2.7.1.2.
Zo nee, waaruit blijkt het niet-pathogene karakter:
Antwoord: Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 bezit niet de genen die coderen voor de
toxines, bekend van andere cyanobacteriën. Er zijn geen meldingen van andere
toxines in de uitgebreide literatuur rond PCC 7002.
2.7.2. Is het uitgangsmicro-organisme anderszins dan bedoeld onder 2.7.1
schadelijk? Nee
2.7.3. Wordt het uitgangsmicro-organisme gebruikt bij de bestrijding van andere
organismen?
Nee
2.8.
Symbiotische relaties
2.8.1. Heeft het uitgangsmicro-organisme symbiotische relaties?
Nee
2.9.
Detectie- en identificatietechnieken
2.9.1. Beschrijving van (detectie-)technieken, waarmee het uitgangsmicroorganisme in het milieu aangetoond kan worden:
Antwoord: Bij hoge concentraties op zicht, anders met behulp van een microscoop.
2.9.2. Beschrijving van (identificatie-)technieken, waarmee het uitgangsmicroorganisme onderscheiden kan worden van verwante micro-organismen:
Antwoord: Met behulp van microscopie en sequentie technieken.
3.
GEGEVENS OVER DE GENETISCHE MODIFICATIE VAN HET
MICRO-ORGANISME
3.1.
Algemene gegevens over de genetische modificatie
3.1.1. Welk type genetische modificatie is gebruikt?
Antwoord: Via homologe recombinatie in een plasmide die al in het
uitgangsorganisme aanwezig was.
3.1.2. Welke methode is gebruikt voor de insertie in het uitgangsmicro-organisme?
Antwoord: Homologe recombinatie
3.1.3. Wat is het beoogde resultaat van de genetische modificatie?
Antwoord: Door overexpressie van het ldha gen, coderend voor D-lactate
hydrogenase, vindt er een excretie van D-lactaat en acetaat plaats.
3.2.
Vectoren
3.2.1. Is bij de genetische modificatie gebruik gemaakt van een vector?
Ja
3.2.2. Is de vector geheel of gedeeltelijk aanwezig in het GGM?
Ja
3.2.3. Welk type vector is gebruikt?
Antwoord: Een plasmide die van nature in het uitgangsorganisme voorkomt.
3.2.4. Wat is het gastheerbereik van de vector?
Antwoord: Er zijn geen gevallen bekend waarbij de vector in de natuur van gastheer
veranderd.
3.2.5. Bevat de vector sequenties die selectie of identificatie op basis van het
fenotype mogelijk maken?
Nee
3.2.6. Bevat de vector mobiliseerbare of zelfoverdraagbare genetische elementen?
Nee
3.2.7. Referenties over deze vector en de op de vector aanwezige sequenties:
Antwoord:
3.2.8. Zijn er bij de constructie van de vector eigenschappen van de vector
veranderd?
Nee
3.2.9. Gedetailleerde beschrijving van de vector:
Antwoord: De vector 7002pAQ1 is een plasmide die van nature voorkomt in het
uitgangsorganisme Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002. Het bestaat uit 4809 baseparen,
waarvan het G-C gehalte op 49% ligt.
3.3.
De insertie
3.3.1. Beschrijving van de opbouw van de insertie:
Antwoord: Het ldhA gen is vervangen door het gen coderend voor gentamycine,
Vervolgens is er via homologe recombinatie de cpc-promotor, het ldhA gen en een
spectinomycine cartridge geplaatst in het pAQ1 plasmide.
3.3.2. Beschrijving van de donor-organismen en hun relevante eigenschappen:
Antwoord: Het gen coderend voor gentamycine komt van oorsprong uit het microorganisme Micromonospora purpurea, een gram positieve, aerobe bacterie die
voorkomt in de grond.
3.3.3. Codeert de in te brengen sequentie voor een of meer genproducten die
functioneel homoloog zijn met van nature in de uitgangsmicro-organisme
voorkomende genproducten?
Ja, het ldhA gen komt van nature voor in het uitgangsorganisme, er vindt hiervan
overexpressie plaats door de promotor cpc.
3.3.4. Wat is de beoogde functie van elk der samenstellende delen van de insertie in
het GGM?
Antwoord: De antibioticaresistentie genen dienen voor selectie, de promotor in
combinatie met het ldhA gen dient voor overexpressie van het ldhA gen.
3.3.5. Wat is het niveau van expressie?
Antwoord: De expressie van ldhA is 3000 keer hoger dan in het wildtype (Bryant et
al., 2011)
3.3.6. Bevat de insertie sequenties waarvan de producten of functies onbekend zijn?
Nee
3.3.7. Bevat de insertie sequenties coderend voor toxinen en/of allergenen?
Nee
3.3.8. Bevat de insertie sequenties coderend voor andere schadelijke stoffen?
Nee
3.3.9. Plaats van de insertie in het GGM:
Antwoord: In het pAQ1 plasmide
3.3.10. Is het geïntroduceerde DNA stabiel in het GGM aanwezig?
Ja
4.
GEGEVENS OVER HET GGM
4.1.
Geschiedenis
4.1.1. Geschiedenis van voorgaande werkzaamheden verricht met de genetisch
gemodificeerde micro-organismen?
Ja
4.2.
eigenschappen van het GGM
4.2.1. Beschrijving van de nieuwe eigenschappen van het GGM:
Antwoord: Door overexpressie van het ldha gen, coderend voor D-lactate
hydrogenase, vindt er een excretie van D-lactaat en acetaat plaats.
4.2.2. Wordt het GGM gebruikt bij de bestrijding van andere (micro-)organismen?
Nee
4.2.2.1.
Effecten op doel-organismen?
Antwoord: Een excretie van D-lactaat en acetaat, die vervolgens kunnen worden
gebruikt in het metabolisme van de zebravis.
4.2.2.2.
Effecten op niet doel-organismen?
Antwoord: De zebravis(embryo) waar waar het GGM in geïnjecteerd wordt kan het
lactaat en acetaat gebruiken als voedselbron.
4.2.3. Beschrijving van de technieken waarmee het GGM van het uitgangsmicroorganisme kan worden onderscheiden:
Antwoord: Via PCR.
4.3.
organisme
Verschillen van het GGM ten opzichte van het uitgangsmicro-
4.3.1. Voortplantingswijze en/of -duur?
Onbekend de wijze van voortplanten [celdeling ] is gelijk aan die van het
ouderorganisme; de delingssnelheid is significant lager.
4.3.2. Overlevings- en verspreidingsstructuren?
Onbekend n.v.t., de Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 heeft geen overlevings of
verspreidingsstructuren.
4.3.3. Overlevingsduur van de overlevings- en verspreidingsstructuren?
Nee n.v.t.
4.3.4. Verspreidingswijze?
Nee n.v.t.
4.3.5. Biologische inperking?
Ja, doordat het organisme lactaat en acetaat uitscheidt zal het in een competitief
nadeel zijn ten opzichte van wilde varianten.
4.3.6. Mobiliseerbare elementen?
Nee.
4.3.7. Antibioticaresistenties?
Ja
Zo ja, geef aan waarvoor de betreffende antibiotica worden gebruikt:
Antwoord: spectinomycine en gentamycine. Beiden worden gebruikt voor selectie.
4.3.8. Overige resistenties?
Nee
4.3.9. Competitieve eigenschappen?
Nee, zie vraag 4.3.5.
4.3.10. Pathogeniteit?
Nee
4.3.11. Productie van toxische/allergene stoffen?
Nee
4.3.12. Productie andere schadelijke stoffen?
Nee
4.3.13. Bijdrage aan geochemische processen?
Nee
4.3.14. Nuttige eigenschappen?
Ja, zie vraag 4.2.2.2.
4.3.15.
Zijn er verschillen van de GGM ten opzichte van het uitgangsmicroorganisme anders dan hierboven genoemd?
Het organisme is geen GGO in de zin der wet.
Het is een kruising van mutanten die door klassieke, chemisch geinduceerde
mutaties is ontstaan. Dr zebravis wordt wel in de tentoonstelling gebruikt als host
voor de gemodificeerde micro-organismen. Injectie van de micro-organismen in de
zebravis vindt elders plaats in een inge[perkt laboratorium.
5.
GEGEVENS OVER HET UITGANGSORGANISME
5.1.
Uitgangsorganisme
5.1.1. Welk type organisme betreft het?
Antwoord: Een vis
5.1.2. Is het uitgangsorganisme een genetisch gemodificeerd organisme?
Ja
5.2.
Beschrijving
Gangbare Nederlandse naam:
Antwoord:Zebravis of zebradanio
Volledige wetenschappelijke naam:
Antwoord: Danio rerio
Familie:
Antwoord: Cyprinidae (Karpers)
Geslacht:
Antwoord: Danio
Soort:
Antwoord: rerio
Ondersoort:
Antwoord:
Pathovar:
Antwoord: Casper
Collectienummer:
Antwoord:
Commerciële benaming:
Antwoord: Casper
Overige naamsgegevens:
Antwoord:
5.3.
Geografische verspreiding
5.3.1. In welke habitat/ecosysteem komt uitgangsorganisme van nature of
oorspronkelijk voor?
Antwoord:De zebravis komt van nature voor in de rivieren ten zuiden van de
Himalaya, met name in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal en Burma.
5.4.
Stofwisselingstype, voortplanting, overleving en verspreiding
5.4.1. Wat is het stofwisselingstype?
Antwoord: Heterotroof
5.4.2. Speelt het uitgangsorganisme een specifieke rol in biologische of
geochemische processen in de bodem?
Nee
5.4.3. Wat is de groeitemperatuur?
Antwoord: Tussen de 22 en 32 graden Celsius, 28.5 graden is de optimale
groeitemperatuur.
5.4.4. Beschrijving van de voortplantingswijze:
Antwoord: Geslachtelijk: De vrouwelijke exemplaren worden tot eierafzetting
bewogen door de mannetjes, waarna de bevruchting buiten het lichaam geschiedt.
De eitjes worden regelmatig door de volwassen vissen opgegeten.
5.4.5. Welke overlevings- en verspreidingsstructuren kan het uitgangsorganisme
vormen?
Antwoord:Eitjes
5.4.6. Hoe lang kunnen de overlevings- en verspreidingsstructuren overleven in:
- de natuurlijke/oorspronkelijke habitat?
Antwoord: De eitjes komen na 48 uur uit.
- in het gebied van introductie?
Antwoord: Er zullen enkel zebravisembryos aanwezig zijn, deze leggen geen eitjes.
5.4.7. Biotische en abiotische factoren die van bepalende invloed zijn op
voortplanting, overleving en verspreiding:
Antwoord: N.v.t.: Er zullen uitsluitendl zebravisembryos aanwezig zijn, deze leggen
geen eitjes.
5.5.
Genetische elementen
5.5.1. Bevat het uitgangsorganisme mobiliseerbare genetische elementen?
Nee
5.5.2. Met welke frequentie treedt mobilisatie op?
Antwoord:N.v.t. zie vraag 5.5.1
5.5.3. Bevat het uitgangsorganisme zelfoverdraagbare elementen?
Nee
5.5.4. Met welke frequentie treedt overdracht op?
Antwoord: N.v.t. zie vraag 5.5.3
5.5.5. Wat is het gastheerbereik van die elementen?
Antwoord: N.v.t. zie vraag 5.5.3
5.5.6. Tot welke incompatibiliteitsklasse behoren die elementen?
Antwoord:
5.5.7. Dragen de elementen resistentie genen?
Antwoord:Nee
5.5.8. Dragen de elementen conjugatieve transposons?
Antwoord:Nee
5.6.
Biologische inperking
5.6.1. Kan het uitgangsorganisme erfelijk materiaal uitwisselen met andere
organismen?
Antwoord:Nee
5.6.2. Is het uitgangsorganisme biologisch ingeperkt?
Ja
Licht toe:
Antwoord: Aangezien het een tropische vissensoort betreft die binnen enkele
minuten buiten het water sterft. Bovendien overleeft de Danio rerio geen
temperaturen onder de 5 graden (Cortemeglia et al., 2008). Het is hierdoor zeer
onwaarschijnlijk dat de soort invasief zou worden.
5.7. Pathogene en schadelijke eigenschappen
54.7.1. Is het uitgangsorganisme een pathogeen?
Nee
5.7.1.1.
Zo ja, geef aan,
De klasse van pathogeniteit volgens de COGEM Richtlijnen?
Antwoord:N.v.t.
Is het uitgangsorganisme op basis van de huidige EGrichtlijnen tot bescherming van de gezondheid van mensen, dieren, planten en hun
producten in een bepaalde categorie ingedeeld?
Nee
Beschrijving van de pathogene eigenschappen van het
uitgangsorganisme:
Antwoord: N.v.t.
5.7.1.2.
Zo nee, waaruit blijkt het niet-pathogene karakter:
Antwoord: Er is in de uitgebreide literatuur geen enkele melding van pathogeniteit.
5.7.2. Is het uitgangsorganisme anderszins dan bedoeld onder 2.7.1 schadelijk?
Nee
5.7.3. Wordt het uitgangsorganisme gebruikt bij de bestrijding van andere
organismen?
Het organisme worst soms gebruikt in de bestrijding van muggenlarven.
5.8.
Symbiotische relaties
5.8.1. Heeft het uitgangsorganisme symbiotische relaties?
Nee
5.9.
Detectie- en identificatietechnieken
5.9.1. Beschrijving van (detectie-)technieken, waarmee het uitgangsorganisme in
het milieu aangetoond kan worden:
Antwoord: De volwassen vissen zijn duidelijk zichtbaar en aan de hand van
fenotypische kenmerken te herkennen. Embryo’s zijn via DNA analyse te
herkennen.
5.9.2. Beschrijving van (identificatie-)technieken, waarmee het uitgangsorganisme
onderscheiden kan worden van verwante organismen:
Antwoord: De zebravis kan herkend worden aan zijn 5 donkerblauwe horizontale
strepen aan de zijkanten van zijn lichaam, tot aan de staartvin. De volwassen
mannetjes hebben goudkleurige strepen tussen de blauwe strepen. Het vrouwtje is
groter, met een lichte buik en zilverkleurige strepen ipv. goudkleurige. De vissen
kunnen tot 6.4 cm lang worden maar worden zelden groter dan 4cm. Embryo’s zijn
via DNA analyse te herkennen.
6.
GEGEVENS OVER DE GENETISCHE MODIFICATIE
6.1.
Algemene gegevens over de genetische modificatie
6.1.1. Welk type genetische modificatie is gebruikt?
Antwoord: De casper mutant van de Danio rerio komt voort uit een kruising tussen
de nacre mutant, met een mutatie in het mitfa gen (Lister et al., 1999) en de roy
orbinson ( kortweg roy) mutant (White et al., 2007), een natuurlijke variëteit. De
casper heeft dus geen genetische modificatie ondergaan en valt hierdoor niet onder
de wetgeving voor genetisch gemodificeerde organismen.
6.1.2. Welke methode is gebruikt voor de insertie in het uitgangsorganisme?
Antwoord: N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.1.1.)
6.1.3. Wat is het beoogde resultaat van de genetische modificatie?
Antwoord: De ‘casper’ mutatie wordt op grote schaal gebruikt als model voor
tumoronderzoek. De mutant is hier met name geschikt voor doordat microscopisch
onderzoek na de embryonale fase niet verstoord wordt door lichtabsorberende
pigmentatie. (Santi et al., 2009, Stoletov et al., 2008, White et al., 2007, King, 2009)
6.2.
Vectoren
6.2.1. Is bij de genetische modificatie gebruik gemaakt van een vector?
Nee, de casper mutant is verkregen door kruising van de nacre en de roy-mutant. De
nacre modificatie is verricht d.m.v. mutagenese met N-ethyl N-nitrsourea (Lister et
al. 1999). De mutatie vindt plaats in het Mitf (Microphtalmia-associated
transcription factor) gerelateerde gen 3A.1. De roy mutatie heeft op natuurlijke wijze
plaatsgevonden. (White et al., 2007)
6.2.2. Is de vector geheel of gedeeltelijk aanwezig in het GGM?
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.2.3. Welk type vector is gebruikt?
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.2.4. Wat is het gastheerbereik van de vector?
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.2.5. Bevat de vector sequenties die selectie of identificatie op basis van het
fenotype mogelijk maken?
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.2.6. Bevat de vector mobiliseerbare of zelfoverdraagbare genetische elementen?
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.2.7. Referenties over deze vector en de op de vector aanwezige sequenties:
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.2.8. Zijn er bij de constructie van de vector eigenschappen van de vector
veranderd?
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.2.9. Gedetailleerde beschrijving van de vector:
Antwoord: N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.3.
De insertie
6.3.1. Beschrijving van de opbouw van de insertie:
Antwoord: N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.3.2. Beschrijving van de donor-organismen en hun relevante eigenschappen:
Antwoord: N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.3.3. Codeert de in te brengen sequentie voor een of meer genproducten die
functioneel homoloog zijn met van nature in de uitgangsorganisme voorkomende
genproducten?
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.3.4. Wat is de beoogde functie van elk der samenstellende delen van de insertie in
het GGM?
Antwoord: N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.3.5. Wat is het niveau van expressie?
Antwoord: N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.3.6. Bevat de insertie sequenties waarvan de producten of functies onbekend zijn?
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.3.7. Bevat de insertie sequenties coderend voor toxinen en/of allergenen?
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.3.8. Bevat de insertie sequenties coderend voor andere schadelijke stoffen?
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.3.9. Plaats van de insertie in het GGM:
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
6.3.10. Is het geïntroduceerde DNA stabiel in het GGM aanwezig?
N.v.t. (zie vraag 6.2.1.)
7
GEGEVENS OVER HET GGO
7..
Geschiedenis
7.1.
Geschiedenis van voorgaande werkzaamheden verricht met de
genetisch gemodificeerde organismen?
Ja, Santi et al., 2009, Stoletov et al., 2008, White et al., 2007, King, 2009.
7.2
eigenschappen van het GGM
7.2.1 Beschrijving van de nieuwe eigenschappen van het GGM:
Antwoord: Door het gebrek aan pigmentatie (melanocyten and iridophoren) is de vis
vrijwel transparant.
7.0.1. Wordt het GGM gebruikt bij de bestrijding van andere (micro-)organismen?
Nee
7.0.1.1.
Effecten op doel-organismen?
Antwoord:
7.0.1.2.
Effecten op niet doel-organismen?
Antwoord:
7.0.2. Beschrijving van de technieken waarmee het GGM van het
uitgangsorganisme kan worden onderscheiden:
Antwoord: Door het witte, vrijwel transparante uiterlijk is de vis duidelijk anders
dan het wildtype.
7.1.
Verschillen van het GGM ten opzichte van het uitgangsorganisme
7.1.1. Voortplantingswijze en/of -duur?
Nee
7.1.2. Overlevings- en verspreidingsstructuren?
Nee
7.1.3. Overlevingsduur van de overlevings- en verspreidingsstructuren?
Nee
7.1.4. Verspreidingswijze?
Nee
7.1.5. Biologische inperking?
Ja, Door het gebrek aan pigment is de casper mutant een makkelijkere prooi voor
natuurlijke predatoren, waardoor de kans op overleving in de natuurlijke biotoop
ingeperkt is. (Logan et al., 2006)
7.1.6. Mobiliseerbare elementen?
Nee
7.1.7. Antibioticaresistenties?
Nee
Zo ja, geef aan waarvoor de betreffende antibiotica worden gebruikt:
Antwoord: N.v.t.
7.1.8. Overige resistenties?
Nee
7.1.9. Competitieve eigenschappen?
Nee
7.1.10. Pathogeniteit?
Nee
7.1.11. Productie van toxische/allergene stoffen?
Nee
7.1.12. Productie andere schadelijke stoffen?
Nee
7.1.13. Bijdrage aan geochemische processen?
Nee
7.1.14. Nuttige eigenschappen?
Ja, De ‘Casper’ mutatie wordt op grote schaal gebruikt als model voor
tumoronderzoek. De mutant is hier met name geschikt voor doordat microscopisch
onderzoek na de embryonale fase niet verstoord wordt door lichtabsorberende
pigmentatie. (Santi et al., 2009, Stoletov et al., 2008, White et al., 2007, King, 2009)
7.1.15.
Zijn er verschillen van de GGM ten opzichte van het
uitgangsorganisme anders dan hierboven genoemd?
Nee
8
GEGEVENS OVER DE UITGANGSPLANTENSOORT
8
8.1.
NAAM VAN DE UITGANGSPLANTENSOORT
Gangbare Nederlandse naam.
Antwoord:
Zandraket
Familie.
Antwoord: Brassicaceae (Kruisbloemenfamilie)
Geslacht.
Antwoord: Arabidopsis
Soort.
Antwoord: thaliana
Ondersoort.
Antwoord:
Cultivar/teeltlijn.
Antwoord: Columbia (Col-0)
GEOGRAFISCHE VERSPREIDING
8.2.1 In welke systemen, buiten agrarische systemen, komt de uitgangsplantensoort
voor in Nederland?
Antwoord: Open zandgronden, ook tussen tegels in steden
8.2.3. In welke systemen, buiten agrarische systemen, komt de uitgangsplantensoort
voor in omringende landen van Nederland?
Antwoord: Open zandgronden, ook tussen tegels in steden
8.2.3. In welke typen agro-ecosystemen wordt de uitgangsplantensoort geteeld?
Antwoord: In principe op zandgrond, de zandraket wordt echter niet in de
agrocultuur gebruikt.
8.2.4. In welke typen (agro-)ecosystemen wordt de uitgangsplantensoort verder
aangetroffen ?
Antwoord: De zandraket kan vrijwel overal aangetroffen worden maar
prefereert zandgrond.
VOORTPLANTING
8.3.1 Wat zijn de wijzen van voortplanting van het gewas in haar natuurlijke
habitat en welke factoren zijn hierop van invloed?
Antwoord: Zelfbestuiving. Wind zou hier invloed op kunnen hebben.
8.3.2 Wat is de wijze van voortplanting van het gewas in het agro-ecosysteem
waarin het wordt geteeld en welke factoren zijn hierop van invloed?
Antwoord: Zelfbestuiving. Wind zou hier invloed op kunnen hebben.
8.3.3. Wat is de generatietijd van het gewas in haar natuurlijke habitat en welke
factoren zijn hierop van invloed?
Antwoord: 6 weken tot 3 maanden. Temperatuur en daglengte zijn bepalend
8.3.4. Wat is de generatietijd van het gewas in het agro-ecosysteem waar het
geteeld wordt en welke factoren zijn hierop van invloed?
Antwoord: 6 weken tot 3 maanden. Temperatuur en daglengte zijn bepalend
OVERLEVING
8.4.1 Welke overlevingsstructuren worden gevormd en welke factoren zijn hierbij
van invloed?
Antwoord: Overlevingsstructuren: Zaden. De bloei en de daaropvolgende
zaadproductie wordt gereguleerd door daglengte en temperatuur.
8.4.2 Wat is de persistentie van de overlevingsstructuren van het gewas in haar
natuurlijke habitat en welke factoren zijn hierbij van invloed?
Antwoord: Hoge persistentie, over de hele wereld in verschillende
klimaattypen. Factoren van invloed: Licht, grondvochtigheid, luchtvochtigheid,
concurrentie met andere planten, beschikbare voedingsstoffen.
8.4.3 Wat is de persistentie van de overlevingsstructuren in het agro-ecosysteem
waar het gewas in Nederland geteeld wordt en welke factoren zijn hierbij van
invloed?
Antwoord: Hoge persistentie. Factoren van invloed: Licht, grondvochtigheid,
luchtvochtigheid, concurrentie met andere planten, beschikbare voedingsstoffen.
8.4.4 Wat is de mogelijkheid tot overleving van het gewas in Nederland buiten het
agro-ecosysteem?
Antwoord: Het gewas overleeft zeer goed buiten het agro-ecosysteem.
8.4.5 Wat is de mogelijkheid tot overleving van het gewas in de omringende
landen buiten het agro-ecosysteem?
Antwoord: Het gewas overleeft zeer goed buiten het agro-ecosysteem, ook in
omringende landen.
VERSPREIDING
8.5.1 Welke verspreidingsstructuren worden gevormd en welke factoren zijn
hierbij van invloed?
Antwoord: Zaad, wind kan een invloed hebben.
8.5.2 Wat is de overleving van verspreidingsstructuren van het gewas in haar
natuurlijke habitat en welke factoren zijn hierbij van invloed?
Antwoord: De overleving van het zaad is sterk afhankelijk van de
luchtvochtigheid, de aanwezigheid van pathogenen en vroege kieming.
8.5.3 Wat is de overleving van verspreidingsstructuren in het agro-ecosysteem
waar het in Nederland geteeld wordt en welke factoren zijn hierbij van invloed?
Antwoord: Zie vraag 8.5.2.
8.5.4 Wat is de mogelijkheid dat het gewas zich verspreidt in Nederland?
Antwoord: De zaden verspreiden makkelijk d.m.v. de wind.
8.5.5 Wat is de mogelijkheid dat het gewas zich verspreidt in de omringende
landen?
Antwoord: De zaden verspreiden makkelijk d.m.v. de wind.
8.6
UITKRUISING
8.6.1 Beschrijf de bestuivingbiologie van het uitgangsgewas
Antwoord: De geslachtelijke voortplanting van Arabidopsis thaliana vindt
overwegend (meer dan 99%) plaats door zelfbestuiving (Abbott en Gomes 1989).
Enkel in gevallen van een zeer hoge concentratie bestuivers kan er kruisbestuiving
plaatsvinden.
[Beschrijf of bestuiving plaatsvindt via wind, insecten of via zelfbestuiving. Indien
van toepassing, geef de verhouding aan tussen de diverse wijzen van bestuiving en
de factoren die van invloed zijn op de bestuiving]
8.6.2 Bestaat de mogelijkheid tot kruising van het gewas met cultuursoorten en
wilde verwanten in Nederland? Zo ja, beschrijf alle mogelijke kruisingen
Antwoord: Uitkruisingen in het wild komt niet meer dan 0.3% voor (Abbott
en Gomes 1989). Aangezien de planten in een volledig afgesloten omgeving
tentoongesteld worden is de kans op kruising met wilde varianten uit te sluiten.
8.6.3 Bestaat de mogelijkheid tot kruising van het gewas met cultuursoorten en
wilde verwanten in omringende landen? Zo ja, beschrijf alle mogelijke kruisingen
Antwoord: Zie vraag 8.6.2.
8.6.4 Beschrijf of uitkruising daadwerkelijk is waargenomen in Nederland of in
omringende landen. Zo ja, beschrijf de omstandigheden waaronder dit heeft
plaatsgevonden
Antwoord: Er is geen uitkruising van Arabidopsis thaliana waargenomen in
Nederland.
INTERACTIES MET ANDERE ORGANISMEN
8.6.1 Beschrijf bekende interacties van het gewas met andere organismen in het
ecosysteem waarin het geteeld wordt
Antwoord: Er zijn geen specifieke interacties bekend.
[Hier wordt gedoeld op mogelijk symbiotische effecten of schadelijke effecten op
insecten, dieren, planten, of mensen]
8.7
IDENTIFICATIEKENMERKEN
8.7.1 Beschrijving van identificatiekenmerken, waarmee de uitgangsplantensoort
onderscheiden kan worden van verwanten
Antwoord: De vier witte kroonblaadjes zijn niet groter dan 0,5 cm. Soms is
het onderscheid met herderstasje moeilijk te zien. Onderzoek met een loep brengt
dan uitkomst. Op de bladeren zitten dan alleen gegaffelde en enkelvoudige haren.
Herderstasje bezit naast enkelvoudige ook sterharen. De kleine hauwen zijn smal en
lijnvormig.
9.
ALGEMENE GEGEVENS OVER DE GENETISCHE MODIFICATIE
EERDERE OF MEERDERE MODIFICATIES
9.1.1 Is het uitgangsplantenmateriaal reeds genetisch gemodificeerd?
Antwoord: Nee, de modificatie vindt plaats bij een wildtype Arabidopsis
(Col-0)
[Geef hier aan of de planten of de plantensoort die genetisch worden
gemodificeerd, al eerder een genetische modificatie hebben ondergaan. Zo ja, geef
aan of de modificatie van het uitgangsmateriaal in Nederland is uitgevoerd en onder
welk vergunningnummer]
ALGEMENE GEGEVENS OVER DE GENETISCHE MODIFICATIE
9.2.2 Welke wijze van genetische modificatie is toegepast?
Antwoord: Het construct wordt d.m.v. floral dipping ingebracht.
9.2.3 Wat is het beoogde resultaat van de genetische modificatie?
Antwoord: De expressie van twee artificiële transcriptiefactoren, met zink
vingers. Doordat de twee transcriptie factoren binden op de zelfde sequentie, vindt er
competitie in de binding plaats. Hierdoor veranderd de expressie in iedere cel op een
andere, niet te voorspellen wijze. De bindingsplek komt honderden keren (524, Zie
Blast) voor in het Arabidopsis genoom.
9.2.4 Is de genetische modificatie in Nederland uitgevoerd? Zo ja, geef het
nummer van de vergunning.
Antwoord: Ja, onder het vergunningsnummer GGO 02-184.
DNA DAT GEBRUIKT IS OM DE PLANT TE MODIFICEREN
9.3.1 Geef een beschrijving van de opbouw van het gehele DNA construct dat
gebruikt is in het modificatieproces. Geef hierbij de herkomst en de beoogde functie
van alle onderdelen van het construct
Antwoord: 2 verschillende constructen coderend voor een zinkvinger worden
ingebracht door middel van de vector Agrobacterium tumefaciens (de hypervirulente
stam Agl-1), in een floral dip onder controle van de promoter van ribosomal protein
gene RPS5A .
De naam van de zinkvinger is 16VD, en heeft als bindingsdomein: GTA
GAG GAG
De gebruikte expressievector is de pRF-VP16 (Lindhout et al., 2006), een
gemodificeerde versie van de pGPTV-KAN vector (Becker et al., 1992).
De twee verschillende constructen zijn: pRF-VP16-3F:gefuseerd met activatie
domein VP16 en Hygromycine resistentie gen. pRF-EAR-3F:gefuseerd met
repressor domein EAR en het Kanamycin resistentie gen.
Figuur 1: schematische weergave van de constructie van de 3F ZF- ATF.
(Lindhout et al., 2006)
[Hiermee wordt het hele construct bedoeld dat is gebruikt om de plant te
modificeren. Als een vector is gebruikt, moet hier dus de herkomst en de beoogde
functie van zowel de vector als het insert beschreven worden, aan de hand van een
kaartje. Geef hierbij ook aan of er onderdelen zijn die coderen voor een schadelijke
stof]
9.3.2 Codeert het construct voor een of meer genproducten die functioneel homoloog zijn met van nature in de uitgangsplantensoort voorkomende genproducten?
Antwoord: Ja, de promoter RPS5A.
9.3.3 Bevat het construct sequenties coderend voor toxinen en/of allergenen?
Antwoord: Nee
9.3.4 Bevat het construct sequenties waarvan de producten onbekend zijn?
Antwoord: Nee
10.
GEGEVENS OVER DE GENETISCH GEMODIFICEERDE PLANT (GGP)
[De gegevens waarnaar wordt gevraagd in de onderstaande punten zijn niet voor alle
experimenten even relevant, en zijn afhankelijk van de categorie van het
veldexperiment. Bijvoorbeeld bij een categorie 1 experiment zijn gegevens over het
aantal kopieën van het insert en de stabiliteit van het insert nog niet essentieel,
terwijl dit voor grootschalige experimenten wel het geval zal zijn].
GESCHIEDENIS
10.1.1 Zijn er eerder werkzaamheden uitgevoerd met de genetisch gemodificeerde
planten of met planten met een vergelijkbare genetische modificatie? Zo ja, geef een
beschrijving van de uitgevoerde werkzaamheden en de resultaten hiervan
Antwoord: Ja er zijn eerder vrijwel identieke experimenten uitgevoerd met
ATFs (artificiële transcriptiefactoren) (Lindhout et al., 2006), hierbij werd er echter
slechts 1 activator gebruikt (VP16). Hierbij werd aangetoond dat de ATFs de
transcriptie in het plantengenoom in hoge mate beïnvloeden.
10.1.2 Zijn er kruisingen van de primaire GGP met andere GGP's uitgevoerd?
Zo ja, geef aan of deze kruisingsproducten deel uitmaken van de
aangevraagde werkzaamheden
Antwoord: Nee
EIGENSCHAPPEN
10.2.1 Geef een beschrijving van de nieuwe of gewijzigde eigenschappen van het
GGP
Antwoord: De GGP heeft artificiële transcriptiefactoren die directe invloed
(activatie of repressie, afhankelijk van de zinkvinger) heeft op de transcriptie van het
plantengenoom. Aangezien de activerende en de represserende transcriptiefactoren
zullen concurreren om het zelfde bindingsdomein is het niet mogelijk om te zeggen
welke genen geactiveerd en welke gedeactiveerd worden. Dit zal ook verschillen van
plant tot plant en zelfs van cel tot cel.
INSERTIE
10.3.1 Omschrijf welke sequenties zijn ingebracht
Antwoord: De sequentie coderend voor de zink vinger, gefuseerd met
respectievelijk het activerende (VP16) of het onderdrukkende (EAR) domein en de
pRPS5A promotor.
10.3.2 Is de insertie geheel of gedeeltelijk aanwezig in het GGP en op welke wijze
is dit bepaald?
Antwoord: In zijn geheel, via PCR.
10.3.3 Hoeveel kopieën van de insertie zijn aanwezig in de plant?
Antwoord: Niet bekend.
10.3.4 Is het insert nucleair of extranucleair gelokaliseerd?
Antwoord: Nucleair
10.3.5 Is de insertie stabiel aanwezig?
Antwoord: Ja
10.3.6 Is de afwezigheid van de vector in het GGP bepaald? Zo ja, overleg de
gehanteerde methode en de resultaten.
Antwoord: Ja, de agrobacteriën zijn verwijderd voordat het zaad is gepland.
Eerst werden de zaden gedesinfecteerd d.m.v. 70% ethanol en vervolgens een 2%
chlooroplossing. Bij het uitplaten van de zaden is naast de selectie markers ook het
antibioticum timentine toegevoegd tegen de agrobacteriën. Planten kunnen hier
doorheen groeien.
EXPRESSIE
10.4.1 In welke weefsels of ontwikkelingsstadia van de plant komen de nieuwe of
gewijzigde eigenschappen tot expressie?
Antwoord: In al het weefsel, enkel tijdens de groei.
10.4.2 Wat is het niveau van expressie in deze weefsels en gedurende deze
ontwikkelingsstadia en met welke methode is dit bepaald?
Antwoord: Niet bekend.
VERSCHILLEN VAN HET GGP EN EVENTUELE
UITKRUISINGSPRODUCTEN TEN OPZICHTE VAN DE
UITGANGSPLANTENSOORT
[Hier wordt gevraagd naar alle verschillen van het GGP, en alle eventuele producten
van uitkruising ten opzichte van de uitgangsplantensoort, die in relatie staan met de
punten die onder B. (gegevens van de uitgangsplantensoort) zijn genoemd]
10.5.1 Voortplantingswijze en/of -duur?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.2 Overlevingsstructuren en/of duur?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.3 Verspreidingswijze en/of duur?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.4 Bestuivingwijze?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.5 Uitkruising?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.6 Biologische inperking?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.7 Competitieve eigenschappen?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.8 Toxische/allergene effecten?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.9 Andere schadelijke effecten?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.10
Symbiotische eigenschappen?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.11
Resistenties/toleranties?
Antwoord: Kanamycine en hygromycine
10.5.12
Interacties met doelorganismen?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.13
Interacties met niet-doelorganismen?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.14
Interacties met het abiotische milieu?
Antwoord: Naar verwachting geen verschil
10.5.15
Zijn er verschillen van het GGP ten opzichte van de
uitgangsplantensoort anders dan hierboven genoemd?
Antwoord: Nee
10.5.16
Beschrijving van de technieken waarmee het GGP van de
uitgangsplantensoort kan worden onderscheiden
Antwoord: De ingebrachte gensequenties kunnen d.m.v. PCR gedetecteerd
worden, waardoor
de GGP's van wildtypen Arabidopsis onderscheiden kunnen worden.
11.
GEGEVENS OVER DE VOORGENOMEN TENTOONSTELLING
11.1
beschrijving van de tentoonstelling
[Hier wordt gevraagd naar een uitgebreide beschrijving de aard en
opzet van de tentoonstelling met andere woorden een beschrijving van de
tentoonstelling, doel van de tentoonstelling en van de interactie tussen de
tentoongestelde ggo’s. Geef een tekening/plattegrond van het systeem waarin de
ggo’s worden tentoongesteld. Geef hierbij aan hoe de inperking van het systeem
gewaarborgd blijft. Geef ook aan welke handelingen worden verricht aan het
systeem tijdens de duur van de tentoonstelling en hoe inperking tijdens deze
handelingen gewaarborgd blijft]
Het doel van de tentoonstelling is het inspireren van het publiek en
concreet bijdragen aan ecologische en sociale rechtvaardigheid. Het miniecosysteem maakt hiervan deel uit en biedt de bezoekers de mogelijkheid om
GMO’s te zien en kennis te maken met modern onderzoek buiten de laboratorium
context. Zie de bijlage voor een meer gedetailleerde beschrijving van de
tentoonstelling.
Er zal interactie plaatsvinden tussen de cyanobacteriën en de zebravis
embryo’ s: De vissen zullen naar verwachting de voedingsstoffen consumeren die
uitgescheiden worden door de bacteriën. Er zal geen interactie plaatsvinden tussen
de planten en de andere organismen aangezien de planten op het landgedeelte zullen
staan terwijl de visembryo’s in water moeten zijn om te overleven.
Aangezien de zebravis embryo’s niet ouder mogen worden dan 8
dagen om niet onder de proefdier wetgeving te vallen is het belangrijk dat de
embryo’s iedere week ververst worden. De oude embryo’s zullen overgebracht
worden naar het Gorlaeus laboratorium, waar ze op de gebruikelijke wijze
opgeofferd worden. Om de inperking tijdens deze verversing te blijven garanderen
zal er gebruik worden gemaakt van een Sterile Connection Device (SCD). Dit wordt
ook wel een Tubewelder genoemd. Aan de onderkant van het embryo reservoir
bevindt zich een gesloten kunststof slang. Door middel van de SCD kan deze slang
op volkomen steriele wijze aangesloten worden aan andere slang, die op zijn beurt
verbonden is met een leeg reservoir (buiten het Errorarium), waar de oude embryo’s
in vervoerd zullen worden. Het systeem werkt door de kunststof buizen dicht te
smelten: Eerst worden ze aan elkaar gesmolten, daarna los van elkaar dicht
gesmolten, zodat de inperking gewaarborgd blijft. Een soortgelijk systeem bevindt
zich aan de bovenzijde van het embryo reservoir in het Errorarium, waarmee in
eerste instantie een spoelvloeistof (water met methyleen blauw) wordt gespoeld om
de oude embryo’s en het vervoer reservoir te spoelen. Wanneer de oude embryo’s
verwijderd zijn, en de onderste connectie gesloten is, wordt de nieuwe lading
embryo’s via de bovenste SCD in het reservoir gebracht. (zie fig 2)
Kunststof handschoenen zijn zo bevestigd dat er handelingen plaats
kunnen vinden in de groeikamer zonder dat de inperking geschonden wordt (zie fig.
3). Deze handelingen zullen voornamelijk plaats vinden aan het einde van de
tentoonstelling, bij het opruimen van de installatie. Op dat moment zal al het GM
materiaal in een afgesloten kunststoffen doos gestopt worden. Via het afgesloten
handschoenen systeem is het ook mogelijk om objecten in het errorarium te plaatsen
zonder de inperking te schenden. Dit kan door van buiten het gewenste object in de
handschoen te plaatsen. Vervolgens wordt er een tweede handschoen bevestigd op
de zelfde plek als de eerste. Op dat moment kan de eerste handschoen samen met het
object met behulp van een tweede hand losgemaakt worden in het errorarium.
Fig 1
Fig 2: Het embryo reservoir in het Errorarium, met de SCD compatible slang.
Fig 3: De kunststof veiligheidshandschoen, aangesloten op het errorarium. Er zullen
twee handschoenen zijn zodat er met beide handen gewerkt kan worden. Het is
mogelijk om objecten in het errorarium te plaatsen via een handschoen, door een
extra handschoen over (of eigenlijk in) de eerste te plaatsen en te bevestigen met een
extra elastishe band.
11.1.
Locatie
11.1.1. Waar vindt de tentoonstelling plaats (adres en zaal )?
11.1.2. In welke gemeenten/provincies liggen deze locaties?
Antwoord: Den Haag
11.1.3. Over welke tijdsperiode vindt de tentoonstelling plaats?
Antwoord: Van 16 maart 2013 tot 1 september 2013.
11.2.
Habitat/Ecosysteem
11.2.1. Verschilt het habitat/ecosysteem gedurende de tentoonstelling van dat waarin
de uitgangsorganisme gewoonlijk wordt gebruikt of aangetroffen?
Antwoord: Ja
11.3. tentoonstellingsmethode en -omvang
11.3.1. Handelingen vóór de tentoonstelling:
Antwoord:
11.3.2. Hoeveel ggo’s worden tentoongesteld?
Antwoord: 12 planten, 20 tot 35 vissenembryo’s met 50 to 150 cyanobacteriën per
vis
11.4. Inperkingen11.4.1. Is de tentoonstelling ingeperkt?
Antwoord: Ja, de organismen zullen worde tentoongesteld in een afgesloten systeem
(het Errorarium). De ventilatie zal door een HEPA filter plaatsvinden.
11.4.2. Methoden om verspreiding van ggo's te voorkomen:
Antwoord: Zie vraag 11.4.2.
11.4.3. Verwachte duur van de tentoonstelling:
Antwoord: 5 maanden
11.5
toezicht
11.4.4. Beschrijft de wijze van toezicht op de tentoonstelling tijdens openingsuren
Antwoord: Er zal constant een bewaker in de nabijheid zijn van het
Errorarium. Ook zal er cameratoezicht zijn.
11.4.5. Is de ruimte waar de tentoonstelling plaatsvindt afgesloten buiten
openingstijden?
Antwoord: Ja
11.6. Vervoer
11.6.1. Is vervoer van de ggos’s noodzakelijk?
Ja, vanuit het Gorlaeus laboratorium dienen regelmatig verse, met cyanobacteriën
geïnjecteerde zebravisembryo’s aangevoerd te worden. De uit het Errorarium
afkomstige ‘afval’stroom , bevat GGO materiaal en wordt naar het Gorleaus lab
teruggebracht volgens de zelfde transportprocedure.
11.6.2. Beschrijf de wijze van vervoeren, indien afwijkend van Bijlage 9 van het
Besluit GGO
11.6.2.1.
Hoe worden de ggo’s verpakt?
Antwoord: de ggo’s zullen vervoerd worden in volledig afgesloten houders van
breukvast materiaal.
11.6.2.2.
Hoe vindt het vervoer plaats?
Antwoord: De afgesloten houders zullen vervolgens met een auto naar het museum
en retour vervoerd worden.
11.5. Na afloop van de tentoonstelling
11.5.3. Behandeling van de tentoonstelling na afloop van het experiment:
Antwoord: De ggo’s zullen eerst gestabiliseerd worden in het afgesloten systeem. De
planten zullen worden afgeknipt en in een extra container geplaatst worden.
Vervolgens zal het hele systeem, in afgesloten toestand naar het Gorlaeus
laboratorium in Leiden vervoerd worden.
11.5.4. Behandeling van de ggo’s na afloop van het experiment:
Antwoord: De ggo’s zullen in het laboratorium in Leiden vernietigd worden conform
de daar geldende procedures en conform de reguliere regelgeving.
11.5.5. Soort en hoeveelheid geproduceerd afval:
Antwoord: Ongeveer 2cm3 dode zebravis embryo’s. 10 potjes met de planten.
11.5.6. Beschrijving van de voorgestelde afvalverwerking:
Antwoord: Het afval zal in het laboratorium verzameld en op de gebruikelijke
manier vernietigd worden.
12.
VOORGESTELDE METHODEN VAN OBSERVATIE TIJDENS EN NA
AFLOOP VAN DE TENTOONSTELLING
Stel een monitoringsplan op waarin staat aangegeven hoe wordt gecontroleerd op de
waarborging van de inperking van het systeem en –indien inperking is doorbrokenhoe wordt gecontroleerd op mogelijke effecten op mens en milieu tijdens en na
afloop van het experiment. Beschrijf hierbij ook welke methoden worden gebruikt
om de observaties uit te voeren.
De interactieve groeikamer (het Errorarium) is een volledig afgesloten systeem, de
lucht toe- en afvoer zal worden gefilterd door middel van HEPA-filters. Het
Errorarium zelf is zo groot en zwaar dat het niet mee te nemen is door
kwaadwillenden. Het bestaat uit zeer stevig materiaal, dat onder normale
omstandigheden onbreekbaar is. Mocht het Errorarium toch beschadigd raken, dan
zal de zaal waar het staat direct afgesloten worden voor het publiek en volledig
gereinigd worden. Ook zullen er samples genomen worden die ter controle naar het
lab gestuurd worden, om de aard van de mogelijke doorbraak van inperking
kwantitatief te analyseren.
13.
ANALYSE VAN DE TE VERWACHTEN EFFECTEN VAN DE
GGO’S OP MENS EN MILIEU
Geef naar aanleiding van de voorgaande vragen een uitgebreide analyse van de te
verwachten effecten van het GGO op mens en milieu, waarbij Bijlage II van de
Richtlijn 2001/18/EC en het hierbij behorend richtsnoer(2002/623/EG) van de
Europese Commissie wordt gevolgd. Bij de analyse dienen zowel directe, indirecte,
onmiddellijke en vertraagde effecten van het GGO op mens en milieu in
beschouwing te worden genomen.
De risicoanalyse moet worden uitgevoerd voor ieder GGO waarop deze aanvraag
betrekking heeft individueel, en indien relevant ook voor combinaties van de
GGO’s.
In de risicoanalyse moeten de effecten van de GGO's in beschouwing worden
genomen die voortvloeien uit interacties van de GGO’s onderling en in het/de
milieu(s) waarin zij door de in de aanvraag beschreven introductie terecht (kunnen)
komen; het gaat hierbij om effecten die betrekking hebben op de veiligheid van
mens en milieu. In bijlage 1 van dit formulier staan aspecten beschreven die in ieder
geval in beschouwing genomen moeten worden.
Een risicoanalyse omvat de volgende onderdelen, die in de aangegeven volgorde
volledig moeten worden behandeld (zie vragen F.1 t/m F.4):
inventarisatie van de mogelijke negatieve effecten die kunnen optreden;
een schatting van de kans of de mogelijkheid dat deze effecten daadwerkelijk
optreden;
op basis van 1 en 2: een evaluatie van de risico's, en een inschatting van de ernst van
die risico's. Bij de inschatting van de ernst kan een vergelijking worden gemaakt met
de ernst die wordt toegekend aan vergelijkbare risico's, bijvoorbeeld in vergelijkbare
situaties waarbij effecten optreden met niet-GGO's ('baseline principe').
indien in 3 de conclusie wordt getrokken dat het risico te hoog is, moet worden
nagegaan welke risicobeheersingmaatregelen (zoals het verwijderen van bloeiwijzen
of hanteren van isolatieafstanden) kunnen worden toegepast om de risico's doelmatig
terug te dringen;
eindconclusie van de risicoanalyse waarin wordt aangegeven welke
risicobeheersingmaatregelen zullen worden toegepast, en een conclusie wordt
getrokken over de aanvaardbaarheid van de risico's, bij toepassing van de beschreven
risicobeheersingmaatregelen.
F.1.
Geef aan volgens welk scenario de ggo’s vanuit de tentoonstelling
kunnen verspreiden naar het milieu.
Antwoord: Wanneer het Errorarium op zo’n manier beschadigd zou
raken dat er organismen ontsnappen. In dit geval zou de verspreiding beperkt blijven
tot de museumzaal waarin het Errorarium staat. Deze zaal zou in dit geval direct
ontruimd en afgesloten worden. De MVF coördineert de schoonmaak en desinfectie,
Alle af te voeren afval dat GGO materiaal bevat wordt via de afvalstroom van het
Gorleaus laboratorium, of een andere instantie die vergelijkbaren materialen onder
ingeperkt gebruik hanteert, afgevoerd, volgens de daar geldende procedures.
Het Errorarium wordt zodanig ontworpen en uitgevoerd dat een verbreking van het
containment alleen kan gebeuren bij grote externe calamiteiten of door grof
vandalisme, waarbij het normale toezicht niet heeft gefunctioneerd.
[Geef in de beantwoording aan volgens welke scenario’s een verspreiding van het
GGO in het milieu kan plaatsvinden. Beredeneer hoe groot de kans is dat
verspreiding daadwerkelijk plaatsvindt. In de vragen F.2. t/m F.4. wordt verzocht
een nadere uitwerking te geven.]
F.2
Geef aan welke mogelijke nadelige effecten gepaard kunnen gaan met
blootstelling van mens of milieu aan de ggo’s.
Antwoord: Geen nadelige effecten. Zowel de zebravissen als de cyanobacteriën en
de planten bezitten geen toxiciteit. De zebravissen en de cyanobacterien zijn
bovendien biologisch ingeperkt en zullen in buiten het Errorarium niet overleven.
Naar verwachting zullen de Arabidopsis planten door de verstoorde genetische
expressie een zeer beperkte overlevingskans hebben in het natuurlijke milieu. Door
het afgesloten systeem waarin de planten zich bevinden is de kans op verspreiding in
hoge mate ingeperkt.
[Beschrijf hier de effecten voor mens en milieu die ten gevolge van het gebruik van
de ggo’s op zouden kunnen treden. Het gaat hier om ‘hazard identification’; in de
volgende vragen wordt ingegaan op de kans dat deze ‘hazards’ ook werkelijk
optreden.]
F.3. Geef een inschatting van de kans dat de in F.2. beschreven nadelige effecten
ook daadwerkelijk kunnen optreden.
Antwoord: De organismen zijn ook volledig afgesloten in het Errorarium, waardoor
direct contact tussen het publiek en de ggo’s uit te sluiten is. Alleen in uitzonderlijke
gevallen kan het containment verbroken worden: Bij een grote calamiteit [ denk aan
de destructie van het gebouw van het GEM] kan het Errorarium beschadigd raken.
Bij vandalisme, waarbij de normale bewaking buite spel staat zou het moedwillig
kunnen worden beschadigd, Bij onderhoud, zoals het wekelijks verwisselen van
vissen en algen zouden procedurele handelingsfouten gemaakt kunnen worden. Deze
procedures worden voorafgaand aan de tentoonstelling getraind. Voor alle drie
mogelijkheden is de kans klein.
[Maak een beargumenteerde inschatting van de kansen van de bij F1 en F2
beschreven aspecten. Hierbij moet eveneens het aantal proefdieren en de dosering in
beschouwing worden genomen.]
F.4. Beschrijf de risico’s die op kunnen treden ten gevolge van de toepassing van
het GGO, waarbij de effecten van eventuele risicobeheersingmaatregelen zijn
meegenomen.
Antwoord: Aangezien de organismen in een volledig gesloten behuizing
ondergebracht zijn is de kans op ontsnapping tot het minimum beperkt. De gevolgen
van die zouden optreden indien een van de GGO’s buiten de afgesloten groeikamer
raakt zijn naar verwachting ook miniem: Al de organismen zijn immers biologisch
ingeperkt.
[Beschrijf de risico’s zodanig dat duidelijk wordt hoe de risico’s door risico
management teruggedrongen kunnen worden.]
Bijlage 1. CONCLUSIES VAN MOGELIJKE MILIEUEFFECTEN
In Bijlage II, onder D1 van de Richtlijn worden een aantal punten opgesomd die,
waar passend, dienen als basis voor de conclusies over de mogelijke milieueffecten
van de voorgenomen introductie van de GGO’s in het milieu. Al deze punten moeten
in de conclusies van de risico-analyse in beschouwing worden genomen.
Waarschijnlijkheid dat de ggo’s in natuurlijke habitats persistent en invasief wordt
onder de omstandigheden van de voorgestelde introductie(s).
Antwoord: Zeer onwaarschijnlijk. (Zie vraag 5.6.2)
Selectieve voordelen of nadelen die op de ggo’s worden overgedragen en de
waarschijnlijkheid dat zulks geschiedt onder de omstandigheden van de voorgestelde
introductie(s).
Antwoord: Voor de ggo’s zijn er enkel nadelen wegens de biologische inperking: De
vissen hebben door gebrek aan pigmenten geen schutkleur meer, de bacteriën
“verspillen” energie door voedingsstoffen uit te scheiden. Het effect op de planten
bestaat enkel uit een veranderde transcriptie, die naar verwachting niet gunstig voor
de plant uitpakt. De kans dat pollen uit het Errorarium zullen komen is zeer klein
aangezien de lucht in- en uitvoer gefilterd wordt door middel van HEPA filters. De
geslachtelijke voortplanting van Arabidopsis thaliana vindt overigens overwegend
(meer dan 99%) plaats door zelfbestuiving (Abbott en Gomes 1989).
Kans op genoverdracht op andere soorten onder de omstandigheden van de
voorgestelde introductie van de ggo’s en selectieve voordelen of nadelen die op deze
soorten worden overgedragen.
Antwoord: De kans op genoverdracht is uit te sluiten.
Mogelijke onmiddellijke en/of vertraagde milieueffecten van de directe en indirecte
interacties tussen de ggo’s en niet-doelwitorganismen.
Antwoord: In het afgesloten systeem vindt geen interactie plaats tussen de ggo’s en
niet-doelwitorganismen.
Mogelijke onmiddellijke en/of vertraagde effecten op de menselijke gezondheid van
mogelijke directe en indirecte interacties tussen de ggo’s en personen die werken
met, in contact komen met of in de nabijheid komen van de ggo-introductie(s).
Antwoord: Aangezien de ggo’s niet toxisch of invasief zijn is er naar verwachting
geen enkel effect.
Mogelijke onmiddellijke en/of vertraagde effecten op de gezondheid van dieren en
effecten op de voeder/voedselketen van consumptie van de ggo’s en alle daarvan
afgeleide producten indien deze voor diervoeder bestemd zijn.
Antwoord: De ggo’s bevatten geen schadelijke stoffen. Indien ze in ze in diervoeder
terecht zouden komen (wat uitermate onwaarschijnlijk is) is er naar verwachting
geen enkel effect.
Mogelijke onmiddellijke en/of vertraagde effecten op biogeochemische processen
die veroorzaakt worden door mogelijke directe en indirecte interacties tussen de
ggo’s en doelwit- en niet-doelwitorganismen in de nabijheid van de ggointroductie(s).
Antwoord: In het afgesloten systeem vindt geen interactie plaats tussen de ggo’s en
niet-doelwitorganismen. De interacties blijven beperkt tot de bacteriën en de
vissenembryo’s. Dit zal geen effect hebben op de biogeochemische processen.
Mogelijke verandering in de staande medische / veterinaire/ landbouwkundige
praktijk.
Antwoord: Aangezien de ggo’s in een volledig afgesloten systeem gehouden worden
zal er geen enkele verandering optreden in de medische, veterinaire of
landbouwkundige praktijk.
Bijlage 2. ALGEMENE GEGEVENS (VERTROUWELIJK DEEL)
VERANTWOORDELIJK MEDEWERKER (VM)
VERANTWOORDELIJK MEDEWERKER VOOR WERKZAAMHEDEN
A.12. Titel, voorletter, voorvoegsel, achternaam:
Antwoord:Ir. David Louwrier
A.13. Instelling/bedrijf:
Antwoord: Universiteit Leiden
A.14. Afdeling/vakgroep:
Antwoord: Leiden University Center for Arts in Society (LUCAS)
A.15. Correspondentieadres:
Antwoord: P.O. Box 9515
A.16. Postcode en plaatsnaam:
Antwoord: 2300 RA Leiden
A.17. Telefoon- en faxnummer:
Antwoord: 071 527 1629
A.18. E-mail adres:
Antwoord: [email protected]
ONDERTEKENING
Namens de Rechtspersoon
Naam: Hans Buurman,
datum
MVF
Naam: Per Staugaard
datum
VM
Naam: David Louwrier
datum
A Google Translate version of the above permit. Please forgive any lack of
nuance in the translation:
APPLICATION INTRODUCTION INTO THE ENVIRONMENT:
EXHIBITION OF GMOs
If you have any questions please contact GMO Office (email: [email protected], phone:
030-2744197).
All information requested on this form are public. Confidential information should
be in a separate annex be enclosed.
The application form includes questions that may not apply to your application.
Please components not related to the work to ask NOT to include in your
application.
CONTENTS
1. GENERAL INFORMATION
2. INFORMATION ON THE OUTPUT MICRO-ORGANISM
3. INFORMATION ON THE GENETIC MODIFICATION
4. INFORMATION ON THE GMM
5. INFORMATION ON THE OUTPUT ORGANISM
6. INFORMATION ON THE GENETIC MODIFICATION
7. INFORMATION ABOUT THE GMO
8. INFORMATION ON THE OUTPUT TYPE PLANTS
9. INFORMATION ON THE GENETIC MODIFICATION
10. INFORMATION ON THE GENETICALLY MODIFIED PLANT
11. INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPOSED EXHIBITION
12. PROPOSED METHODS OF OBSERVATION DURING AND AFTER THE
EXHIBITION
13. ANALYSIS OF THE LIKELY EFFECTS OF GMOs TO HUMANS AND THE
ENVIRONMENT
INTERNET http://bggo.rivm.nl
ABBREVIATIONS
Control Control genetically modified organisms
GMO Genetically Modified Organism
1. GENERAL INFORMATION
1.1. Title of application
Answer: Public exhibition of a mini ecosystem consisting of modified plants,
animals and micro-organisms.
1.2. Give a brief description of the content of the application.
Answer:
[Invite a descriptive title that sufficient information about the purpose of the
intended application. For example, "small-scale tests with a non-blooming apple
trees in which a genetically modified gene coding for an anti-microbial protein
(hordothionine) is inserted. The genetic modification seeks an increased resistance of
apple trees against certain plant pathogenic fungi to achieve.]
1.3. Enter a description of the proposed activities.
Answer: In a specially designed container contained modified plants, microorganisms and zebrafish embryos exhibited. The container is contained the
Errorarium mentioned. The public can here circumstances change: sounds and
lighting. A wild-type Arabidopsis thaliana (Col-0) is treated with artificial
transcription factors with zinc fingers to a change in gene expression to cause. Two
different constructs of a zinc finger can be introduced by means of the
Agrobacterium tumefaciens vector (the hyper-virulent strain Agl-1), in a floral dip
under the control of the promoter of ribosomal protein gene RPS5A.
[Provide a comprehensive, detailed description of the work]
1.4. Planned commencement year.
Answer: (March) 2013
1.5. Expected end year.
Answer: (September) 2013
1.6. Want to keep information confidential? If so, provide a justification that clarify
the adverse effects disclosure of this information for your competitive position.
Answer: No
[All the information provided in the application and its annexes is provided may, to
the extent not identified as confidential, in public perusal of the application and the
(draft) decision be made public.
Identified as confidential parts of a public summary should be provided, where
sufficient information is a good general understanding of the application. It must
also be presented which argued a motivation as to why certain information is marked
confidential.]
PURPOSE OF RELEASE INTO THE ENVIRONMENT
1.7. Specific objective of the work being requested.
Answer: The audience in the museum acquainted with genetically modified
organisms. The plants, animals and micro-organisms will be the basis for a pulse of
the public debate about the malleability of living organisms and the Biobased
Economy. See the appendix.
[The specific objective of the project: for example, resistance testing of disease
resistance against pathogenic x]
1.8. General objective of the work that is being requested.
Answer: To stimulate the public debate.
[Here is the long term goal of the experiments referred as' the development of
disease resistance of apple trees against fungal and bacterial diseases]
PERMIT APPLICANT
[The applicant is presented the entity that is ultimately responsible for the work]
1.9. Name Entity.
Answer: Municipal Museum The Hague
Address.
Answer: Stadhouderslaan 41
Postcode and place.
Answer: 2517 HR, The Hague
2. INFORMATION ON THE OUTPUT MICRO-ORGANISM
2.1. OUTPUT MICRO-ORGANISM
2.1.1. What type of microorganism involved?
Answer: Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002
2.1.2. The starting microorganism genetically modified micro-organism?
No
2.2. DESCRIPTION
Typical Dutch name:
Answer:
Full scientific name:
Answer: Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002
Family:
Answer: Chroococcales
Gender:
Answer: Synechococcaceae
Type:
Answer:
Subspecies:
Answer:
Pathovar:
Answer: PCC 7002
Collection Number:
Answer:
Commercial name:
Answer:
Other details name:
Answer:
2.3. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
2.3.1. In what habitat / ecosystem is starting microorganism naturally or originally?
Answer: Tropical, brackish to saline water. The species was first observed in
stomachs of fish caught by Maguyes Island, La Parguera, Puerto Rico.
2.4. METABOLISM TYPE, REPRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION AND
SURVIVAL
2.4.1. What is the metabolic type?
Answer: photoautotroof may also heterotrophic grown with glycerol as substrate.
2.4.2. Plays the starting microorganism has a specific role in biological and
geochemical processes in the soil?
No
2.4.3. What is the growth temperature?
Answer: Mesophile. The optimum growth temperature is 38 degrees Celsius.
2.4.4. Description of the mode of reproduction:
Answer: Sharing
2.4.5. Which survival and dissemination structures, the output microorganism
forms?
Answer: No
2.4.6. How long can the survival and distribution structures survive:
- The natural / original habitat?
Answer: Unknown
- In the area of introduction?
Answer: Unknown
2.4.7. Biotic and abiotic factors determining influence on reproduction, survival and
dispersal:
Answer: Salinity, light and temperature are decisive for the survival and
reproduction of the organism.
2.5. GENETIC ELEMENTS
2.5.1. Contains the starting microorganism mobilizable genetic elements?
No, there are no IS and MITE transposable elements in the genome. (Lin et al, 2010)
2.5.2. How frequently occurs on mobilization?
Answer :: N.A.: See question 2.5.1
2.5.3. Contains the starting microorganism self-transmissible elements?
No
2.5.4. How frequently occurs on transfer?
Answer: N.A.
2.5.5. What is the host range of these elements?
Answer: N.A.
2.5.6. Which incompatibility class includes those elements?
Answer: The incompatibility class seems to be limited to Synechococcus sp. PCC
7002 (Akiyama et al, 1998)
2.5.7. Do the elements resistance genes?
Answer: No, the source organism (wild type) does not contain resistance genes.
2.5.8. Do the elements conjugative transposons?
Answer: No
2.6. BIOLOGICAL CONTAINMENT
2.6.1. Can the output micro-organism exchange genetic material to other organisms?
Answer: No
2.6.2. The starting microorganism biologically contained?
Yes
Explains:
Answer: Due to the high demands with respect to temperature and salinity.
2.7. PATHOGENIC AND HARMFUL PROPERTIES
2.7.1. Is the starting micro-organism is a pathogen?
No
2.7.1.1. If yes, specify,
- The class of pathogenicity according COGEM Guidelines?
Answer: N.A.
- Is the starting microorganism according to current EC Directives to protect the
health of humans, animals, plants and their products in a certain category?
No
- Description of the pathogenic properties of the output micro-organism:
Answer: N.A.
2.7.1.2. If not, showing the non-pathogenic character:
Answer: Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 does not have the genes coding for the
toxins, known from other cyanobacteria. There are no reports of other toxins in the
extensive literature on PCC 7002.
2.7.2. The starting microorganism other than those mentioned under 2.7.1 harmful?
No
2.7.3. The starting microorganism used in the control of other organisms?
No
2.8. Symbiotic relationships
2.8.1. Does the starting microorganism symbiotic relationships?
No
2.9. DETECTION AND IDENTIFICATION TECHNIQUES
2.9.1. Description of (detection) techniques, which controls the output microorganism in the environment, it can be demonstrated:
A: At high concentrations on sight, or with the aid of a microscope.
2.9.2. Description of (identification) techniques, which controls the output microorganism can be distinguished from related micro-organisms:
Answer: Using microscopy and sequencing techniques.
3. INFORMATION ON THE GENETIC MODIFICATION OF THE MICROORGANISM
3.1. GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE GENETIC MODIFICATION
3.1.1. What type of genetic modification is used?
Answer: via homologous recombination in a plasmid which already was present in
the starting organism.
3.1.2. Which method is used for the insertion in the starting micro-organism?
Answer: Homologous recombination
3.1.3. What is the intended result of the genetic modification?
Answer: By over-expression of the ldha gene coding for D-lactate dehydrogenase,
there is a excretion of D-lactate and acetate place.
3.2. VECTORS
3.2.1. Is used in the genetic modification of a vector?
Yes
3.2.2. Is the vector wholly or partially present in the GMM?
Yes
3.2.3. Which type of vector is used?
Answer: A plasmid naturally occurring in the source organism.
3.2.4. What has been the host range of the vector?
Answer: There are no known cases where the vector nature of host changed.
3.2.5. , The vector contains sequences that selection or identification on the basis of
the phenotype possible?
No
3.2.6. Contains the mobilizable vector or self-transmissible genetic elements?
No
3.2.7. On this vector, and the references present on the vector sequences:
Answer:
3.2.8. There are in the construction of the vector features of the vector changed?
No
3.2.9. Detailed description of the vector:
Answer: The 7002pAQ1 vector is a plasmid which occurs naturally in the organism
output Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002. It consists of 4809 base pairs, of which 49% is
located on GC content.
3.3. The insertion
3.3.1. Description of the construction of the insertion:
Answer: The ldhA gene is replaced by the gene coding for gentamicin, and then
there is via homologous recombination, the CPC-promoter, the ldhA gene, and a
spectinomycin cartridge is placed in the pAQ1 plasmid.
3.3.2. Description of the donor organisms and their relevant properties:
Answer: The gene coding for gentamicin originates from the micro-organism
Micromonospora purpurea, a gram positive, aerobic bacterium that occurs in the soil.
3.3.3. Encodes the sequence for bringing in one or more gene products that are
functional ho-mo ¬ homologous to naturally occurring in the starting microorganism occurring gene products?
Yes, it ldhA gene occurs naturally in the starting organism, there is overexpression
of this place by the promoter cpc.
3.3.4. What is the intended function of each constituent part of the insert in the
GMM?
Answer: The antibiotic resistance genes are used for selection, the promoter in
combination with the ldhA gene is used for over-expression of the ldhA gene.
3.3.5. What is the level of expression?
Answer: The expression of ldhA is 3000 times higher than in the wild type (Bryant
et al, 2011)
3.3.6. Contains the insertion sequences whose products or functions are unknown?
No
3.3.7. Contains the insertion sequences coding for toxins and / or allergens?
No
3.3.8. Contains the insertion sequences encoding other harmful substances?
No
3.3.9. Place the insertion into the GMM:
Answer: In the pAQ1 plasmid
3.3.10. The introduced DNA is stable in the GMM present?
Yes
4. INFORMATION ON THE GMM
4.1. HISTORY
4.1.1. History of previous activities with genetically modified micro-organisms?
Yes
4.2. PROPERTIES OF THE GMM
4.2.1. Description of the new features of the GMM:
Answer: By over-expression of the ldha gene coding for D-lactate dehydrogenase,
there is a excretion of D-lactate and acetate place.
4.2.2. The GMM is used to control other (micro) organisms? No
4.2.2.1. Effects on target organisms?
Answer: A excretion of D-lactate and acetate, which can then be used in the
metabolism of the zebrafish.
4.2.2.2. Effects on non-target organisms?
Answer: The zebrafish (embryos) where where the GMM is injected, the lactate and
acetate as a food source.
4.2.3. Description of the techniques used for the GMM output by the microorganism can be distinguished:
Answer: Through PCR.
4.3. DIFFERENCES OF THE GMM AGAINST THE OUTPUT MICROORGANISM
4.3.1. Propagation Method and / or expensive?
The unknown manner of reproduction [cell division] is equal to that of the parent
organism, the proliferation rate is significantly lower.
4.3.2. Survival and distribution structures?
N.a. unknown, the Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 has no survival or dissemination
structures.
4.3.3. Survival Duration of survival and dissemination structures?
No N.A.
4.3.4. Distribution Method?
No n.a.
4.3.5. Biological containment?
Yes, because the lactate and acetate organism excretes it will be in a competitive
disadvantage relative to wild relatives.
4.3.6. Mobilizable elements?
No.
4.3.7. Antibiotic resistances?
Yes
If yes, please indicate which relevant antibiotics are used:
Answer: spectinomycin and gentamycin. Both of them are used for selection.
4.3.8. Other resistances?
No
4.3.9. Competitive properties?
No, see question 4.3.5.
4.3.10. Pathogenicity?
No
4.3.11. Production of toxic / allergenic substances?
No
4.3.12. Produce other harmful substances?
No
4.3.13. Contribution to geochemical processes?
No
4.3.14. Useful properties?
Yes, see question 4.2.2.2.
4.3.15. There are differences of the GMM output with respect to the micro-organism
other than the above mentioned?
The organism is not a GMO within the meaning of the law.
It is a cross of mutants by conventional, chemically induced mutations arose. Dr.
zebrafish will be in the exhibition used to host the modified micro-organisms.
Injection of the micro-organisms in the zebrafish takes place in a built elsewhere
[limited laboratory.
5. INFORMATION ON THE OUTPUT ORGANISM
5.1. SOURCE ORGANISM
5.1.1. What type of organism it?
Answer: A fish
5.1.2. The starting organism is a genetically modified organism?
Yes
5.2. DESCRIPTION
Typical Dutch name:
Answer: Zebrafish or zebradanio
Full scientific name:
Answer: Danio rerio
Family:
Answer: Cyprinidae (Minnows or carps)
Gender:
Answer: Danio
Type:
Answer: rerio
Subspecies:
Answer:
Pathovar:
Answer: Casper
Collection Number:
Answer:
Commercial name:
Answer: Casper
Other details name:
Answer:
5.3. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
5.3.1. In what habitat / ecosystem is starting organism naturally or originally?
Answer: The zebrafish occurs naturally in rivers south of the Himalayas, especially
in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Burma.
5.4. METABOLISM TYPE, REPRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION AND
SURVIVAL
5.4.1. What is the metabolic type?
Answer: Heterotrophic
5.4.2. Plays the starting organism has a specific role in biological and geochemical
processes in the soil?
No
5.4.3. What is the growth temperature?
Answer: Between 22 and 32 degrees Celsius, 28.5 degrees is the optimum growth
temperature.
5.4.4. Description of the mode of reproduction:
Answer: Homosexual: The females egg deposition to be moved by the males, and
fertilization takes place outside the body. The eggs are regularly eaten by the adult
fish.
5.4.5. Which survival and dissemination structures can form the starting organism?
Answer: Eggs
5.4.6. How long can the survival and distribution structures survive:
- The natural / original habitat?
Answer: The eggs hatch after 48 hours.
- In the area of introduction?
Answer: There will only zebravisembryos present, they lay no eggs.
5.4.7. Biotic and abiotic factors determining influence on reproduction, survival and
dispersal:
Answer: N: There will uitsluitendl zebravisembryos present, they lay no eggs.
5.5. GENETIC ELEMENTS
5.5.1. Contains the starting organism mobilizable genetic elements?
No
5.5.2. How frequently occurs on mobilization?
Answer: N.A. see question 5.5.1
5.5.3. Contains the starting organism transferable elements?
No
5.5.4. How frequently occurs on transfer?
Answer: N.A. see question 5.5.3
5.5.5. What is the host range of these elements?
Answer: N.A. see question 5.5.3
5.5.6. Which incompatibility class includes those elements?
Answer:
5.5.7. Do the elements resistance genes?
Answer: No
5.5.8. Do the elements conjugative transposons?
Answer: No
5.6. BIOLOGICAL CONTAINMENT
5.6.1. Can the starting organism exchange genetic material to other organisms?
Answer: No
5.6.2. The starting organism biologically contained?
Yes
Explains:
Answer: Since it is a tropical fish species: within a few minutes out of water dies.
Moreover survives Danio rerio no temperatures below 5 degrees (Cortemeglia et al,
2008). It is therefore very unlikely that the species would be invasive.
5.7. PATHOGENIC AND HARMFUL PROPERTIES
54.7.1. The starting organism is a pathogen?
No
5.7.1.1. If yes, specify,
- The class of pathogenicity according COGEM Guidelines?
Answer: N.A.
- Is the source organism based on the current EC directives to protect the health of
humans, animals, plants and their products in a certain category?
No
- Description of the pathogenic properties of the starting organism:
Answer: N.A.
5.7.1.2. If not, showing the non-pathogenic character:
Answer: There is extensive literature no mention of pathogenicity.
5.7.2. The starting organism other than those mentioned under 2.7.1 harmful? No
5.7.3. The starting organism used to control other organisms?
The organism sausage sometimes used in the control of mosquito larvae.
5.8. Symbiotic relationships
5.8.1. Does the starting organism symbiotic relationships?
No
5.9. DETECTION AND IDENTIFICATION TECHNIQUES
5.9.1. Description of (detection) techniques, which controls the output organism in
the environment can be detected:
Answer: The mature fish are clearly visible and, on the basis of phenotypic
characteristics to recognize. Embryos were identified through DNA analysis.
5.9.2. Description (ID) techniques, which the starting organism can be distinguished
from related organisms:
Answer: The zebrafish can be recognized by its 5 dark blue horizontal stripes on the
sides of his body, to the caudal fin. The adult males have gold stripes between the
blue stripes. The female is larger, with a light belly and silver stripes instead. gold.
The fish can be up to 6.4 cm long but are rarely larger than 4cm. Embryos were
identified through DNA analysis.
6. INFORMATION ON THE GENETIC MODIFICATION
6.1. GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE GENETIC MODIFICATION
6.1.1. What type of genetic modification is used?
Answer: casper mutant of the Danio rerio comes from a cross between the nacre
mutant, with a mutation in the gene mitfa (Lister et al, 1999) and the roy orbinson
(short roy) mutant (White et al, 2007 ), a natural variety. The casper has no genetic
modification undergone and is therefore not covered by the legislation on genetically
modified organisms.
6.1.2. Which method is used for the insertion in the output organism?
Answer: N.A. (See question 6.1.1.)
6.1.3. What is the intended result of the genetic modification?
Answer: The 'casper' mutation is widely used as a model for tumor research. The
mutant is particularly suitable for microscopic examination because after the
embryonic stage is not disturbed by light absorbing pigmentation. (Santi et al, 2009,
Stoletov et al, 2008, White et al, 2007, King, 2009)
6.2. VECTORS
6.2.1. Is used in the genetic modification of a vector?
No, the casper mutant was obtained by crossing the nacre and roy mutant. The nacre
modification is performed by means mutagenesis with N-ethyl-N nitrsourea (Lister
et al, 1999). The mutation occurs in the Mitf (Microphtalmia-associated transcription
factor)-related gene 3A.1. The roy mutation has occurred naturally. (White et al,
2007)
6.2.2. Is the vector wholly or partially present in the GMM?
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.2.3. Which type of vector is used?
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.2.4. What has been the host range of the vector?
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.2.5. , The vector contains sequences that selection or identification on the basis of
the phenotype possible?
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.2.6. Contains the mobilizable vector or self-transmissible genetic elements?
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.2.7. On this vector, and the references present on the vector sequences:
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.2.8. There are in the construction of the vector features of the vector changed?
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.2.9. Detailed description of the vector:
Answer: N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.3. The insertion
6.3.1. Description of the construction of the insertion:
Answer: N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.3.2. Description of the donor organisms and their relevant properties:
Answer: N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.3.3. Encodes the sequence for bringing in one or more gene products that are
functional ho-mo ¬ homologous to naturally occurring gene in the starting
organism?
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.3.4. What is the intended function of each constituent part of the insert in the
GMM?
Answer: N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.3.5. What is the level of expression?
Answer: N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.3.6. Contains the insertion sequences whose products or functions are unknown?
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.3.7. Contains the insertion sequences coding for toxins and / or allergens?
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.3.8. Contains the insertion sequences encoding other harmful substances?
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.3.9. Place the insertion into the GMM:
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
6.3.10. The introduced DNA is stable in the GMM present?
N.A. (See question 6.2.1.)
7 DATA ABOUT THE GMO
7 .. HISTORY
7.1. History of previous activities with genetically modified organisms?
Yes, Santi et al, 2009, Stoletov et al, 2008, White et al, 2007, King, 2009.
7.2 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GMM
7.2.1 Description of the new features of the GMM:
Answer: Due to the lack of pigmentation (melanocytes and iridophoren) the fish is
almost transparent.
7.0.1. The GMM is used to control other (micro) organisms? No
7.0.1.1. Effects on target organisms?
Answer:
7.0.1.2. Effects on non-target organisms?
Answer:
7.0.2. Description of the techniques that the GMM of the starting organism can be
distinguished:
Answer: Because the white, almost transparent appearance is the fish clearly
different than the wild type.
7.1. DIFFERENCES OF THE GMM AGAINST THE OUTPUT ORGANISM
7.1.1. Propagation Method and / or expensive?
No
7.1.2. Survival and distribution structures?
No
7.1.3. Survival Duration of survival and dissemination structures?
No
7.1.4. Distribution Method?
No
7.1.5. Biological containment?
Yes, by the lack of pigment, the mutant casper an easier prey for natural predators,
increasing the likelihood of survival in the natural habitat is restricted. (Logan et al,
2006)
7.1.6. Mobilizable elements?
No
7.1.7. Antibiotic resistances?
No
If yes, please indicate which relevant antibiotics are used:
Answer: N.A.
7.1.8. Other resistances?
No
7.1.9. Competitive properties?
No
7.1.10. Pathogenicity?
No
7.1.11. Production of toxic / allergenic substances?
No
7.1.12. Produce other harmful substances?
No
7.1.13. Contribution to geochemical processes?
No
7.1.14. Useful properties?
Yes, the 'Casper' mutation is widely used as a model for tumor research. The mutant
is particularly suitable for microscopic examination because after the embryonic
stage is not disturbed by light absorbing pigmentation. (Santi et al, 2009, Stoletov et
al, 2008, White et al, 2007, King, 2009)
7.1.15. Are there differences in the GMM relative to the starting organism other than
above?
No
8 OUTPUT DATA ON PLANT SPECIES
8 NAME OF THE OUTPUT TYPE PLANTS
8.1. Typical Dutch name.
Answer: Sand Rocket
Family.
Answer: Brassicaceae (Finials Family)
Gender.
Answer: Arabidopsis
Kind.
Answer: thaliana
Subspecies.
Answer:
Cultivar / breeding line.
Answer: Columbia (Col-0)
8.2 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
8.2.1 Which systems, outside agricultural systems, is the starting plant species in the
Netherlands?
Answer: Open sandy soils, also between tiles in cities
8.2.3. In the systems, outside agricultural systems, is the starting plant species in
neighboring countries of the Netherlands?
Answer: Open sandy soils, also between tiles in cities
8.2.3. In what types of agro-ecosystems, the output type of plants grown?
Answer: In principle, on sandy soil, Arabidopsis is not used in the agri-culture.
8.2.4. In which types of (agro-) ecosystems, the output plant species found further?
Answer: The Arabidopsis can be found almost anywhere but prefers sandy soil.
8.3 REPRODUCTIVE
8.3.1 What are the modes of propagation of the plant in its natural habitat and what
factors influence this?
Answer: Self-pollination. Wind could here can influence.
8.3.2 What is the mode of reproduction of the crop in the agro-ecosystem in which it
is grown and what factors influence this?
Answer: Self-pollination. Wind could here can influence.
8.3.3. What is the generation time of the plant in its natural habitat and what factors
influence this?
Answer: 6 weeks to 3 months. Temperature and photoperiod are decisive
8.3.4. What is the generation time of the crop in the agro-ecosystem where it is
grown and what factors influence this?
Answer: 6 weeks to 3 months. Temperature and photoperiod are decisive
8.4 SURVIVAL
8.4.1 Which survival structures are formed and what factors have an influence?
Answer: Survivability: Seeds. The flowering and subsequent seed production is
regulated by photoperiod and temperature.
8.4.2 What is the persistence of the survival structures of the plant in its natural
habitat and what factors have an influence?
Answer: High persistence, all over the world in different climates. Factors of
influence: Light, soil moisture, humidity, competition with other plants, available
nutrients.
8.4.3 What is the persistence of survival structures in the agro-ecosystem where the
crop is grown in the Netherlands and which factors have an influence?
Answer: High persistence. Factors of influence: Light, soil moisture, humidity,
competition with other plants, available nutrients.
8.4.4 What is the possibility of survival of the crop in the Netherlands outside the
agro-ecosystem?
Answer: The crop survives well outside the agro-ecosystem.
8.4.5 What is the possibility of survival of the crop in the surrounding countries
outside the agro-ecosystem?
Answer: The crop survives well outside the agro-ecosystem, also in neighboring
countries.
8.5 DISTRIBUTION
8.5.1 Which distribution structures are formed and what factors have an influence?
Answer: Seed, wind can have an impact.
8.5.2 What is the survival of distribution structures of the plant in its natural habitat
and what factors have an influence?
Answer: The survival of the seed is highly dependent on the humidity, the presence
of pathogens and early germination.
8.5.3 What is the survival of distribution structures in the agro-ecosystem where it is
grown in the Netherlands and which factors have an influence?
Answer: See question 8.5.2.
8.5.4 What is the possibility that the plant spreads in the Netherlands?
Answer: The seeds spread easily by means the wind.
8.5.5 What is the possibility that the plant spreads in the surrounding countries?
Answer: The seeds spread easily by means the wind.
8.6 Outcrossing
8.6.1 Describe the pollination biology of the crop output
Answer: The sexual reproduction of Arabidopsis thaliana are predominantly (over
99%) rather than by self-pollination (Abbott and Gomes 1989). Only in cases of a
very high concentration of cross-pollination pollinator may occur.
[Describe or pollination by wind, insects, or through self-pollination. If applicable,
specify the relationship between the various modes of pollination and the factors that
affect the pollination]
8.6.2 Is it possible to cross from the crop cultivated species and wild relatives in the
Netherlands? If yes, describe all possible intersections
Answer: outcrosses in the wild is not more than 0.3% for (Abbott and Gomes 1989).
Since the plants are in a completely closed environment be exhibited, the risk of
crossing with wild relatives to exclude.
8.6.3 Is it possible to cross from the crop cultivated species and wild relatives in
neighboring countries? If yes, describe all possible intersections
Answer: See question 8.6.2.
8.6.4 Describe or outcrossing actually observed in the Netherlands or in neighboring
countries. If yes, describe the circumstances under which this occurred
Answer: There is no outcrossing Arabidopsis thaliana were observed in the
Netherlands.
8.6 INTERACTIONS WITH OTHER ORGANISMS
8.6.1 Describe known interactions of the plant with other organisms in the ecosystem
where it is grown
Answer: There are no specific interactions are known.
[This refers to possible symbiotic effects or adverse effects on insects, animals,
plants, or people]
8.7 IDENTIFICATION CHARACTERISTICS
8.7.1 Description of identifiers which the output plant species can be distinguished
from relatives
Answer: The four white petals are not larger than 0.5 cm. Sometimes the distinction
herderstasje difficult to see. Examination with a magnifier brings a solution. The
leaves are only gegaffelde and single hairs. Shepherd's purse held next single also
stellate hairs. The small pods are narrow and linear.
9. GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE GENETIC MODIFICATION
9.1 PAST OR MULTIPLE MODIFICATIONS
9.1.1 Is the starting plant material already genetically modified?
Answer: No, the modification occurs at a wild-type Arabidopsis (Col-0)
[Indicate whether the plants or plant species that are genetically modified,
already have undergone a genetic modification. If yes, please indicate whether the
modification of the starting material in the Netherlands was carried out and under
what license number]
9.2 GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE GENETIC MODIFICATION
9.2.2 Which method of genetic modification is applied?
Answer: The construct is by means floral dipping inserted.
9.2.3 What is the intended result of the genetic modification?
Answer: The expression of two artificial transcription factors, zinc fingers. In that
the two transcription factors bind to the same sequence, there will be competition at
the binding site. This changes the expression in each cell is in a different, can not be
predicted manner. The binding site is hundreds of times (524, see Blast) in the
Arabidopsis thaliana genome.
9.2.4 Is the genetic modification performed in the Netherlands? If yes, give the
number of the license.
Answer: Yes, under the authorization number 02-184 GMO.
9.3 DNA THAT USED TO THE PLANT TO ALTER
9.3.1 Specify a description of the construction of the entire DNA construct, that has
been used in the modification process. Please state the source and intended function
of all components of the construct
Answer: 2 different constructs coding for a zinc finger can be introduced by means
of the Agrobacterium tumefaciens vector (the hyper-virulent strain Agl-1), in a floral
dip under the control of the promoter of ribosomal protein gene RPS5A.
The name of the zinc finger is 16VD, and has as its binding domain: GTA GAG
GAG
The expression vector is the pRF-VP16 (Lindhout et al, 2006), a modified version of
the vector pGPTV-KAN (Becker et al, 1992).
The two different constructs are as follows: PRF-VP16-3F: fused with VP16
activation domain and hygromycin resistance gene. pRF-EAR-3F: merged with EAR
repressor domain and the Kanamycin resistance gene.
Figure 1: Schematic representation of the construction of the ZF-3F ATF. (Lindhout
et al, 2006)
[This means that the entire construct is used to modify the plant. If a vector is used,
in this case the origin and the intended function of both the vector and the insert are
described, on the basis of a card. Please state also whether there are items that
encode a harmful substance]
9.3.2 the construct encodes for one or more gene products that are functional ho ¬
mo ¬ homologous to naturally occurring plant species in the output gene products?
Answer: Yes, the promoter RPS5A.
9.3.3 Does the construct sequences coding for toxins and / or allergens?
Answer: No
9.3.4 Does the construct sequences whose products are unknown?
Answer: No
10. INFORMATION ON THE GENETICALLY MODIFIED PLANT (GGP)
[The information which is required in the following points are not equally relevant
for all experiments, and depend on the class of the field experiment. For example, in
one experiment, a category, data on the number of copies of the insert and the
stability of the insert is not critical, while for large-scale experiments it will be the
case].
10.1 HISTORY
10.1.1 Are there previously performed with genetically modified plants or plants
with similar genetic modification? If yes, please give a description of the work
performed and the results
Answer: Yes, there are already almost identical experiments performed with ATFs
(artificial transcription factors) (Lindhout et al, 2006), this was however only 1
activator (VP16). It was shown that the ATFs the transcription in the plant genome
in high degree.
10.1.2 Are there hybrids with other primary GGP GGP's done?
If yes, indicate whether this cross products are part of the requested work
Answer: No
10.2 PROPERTIES
10.2.1 Describe the new or changed properties of the GGP
Answer: The GCP is artificial transcription factors having a direct influence
(activation or repression, depending on the zinc finger) on the transcription of the
plant genome. Since the activating transcription factors and the represserende will
compete for the same binding domain, it is not possible to say which genes are
activated, and which can be deactivated. This will also differ from plant to plant and
even from cell to cell.
10.3 INSERTION
10.3.1 Describe what sequences are inserted
Answer: The sequence encoding the zinc finger, respectively, fused to the activator
(VP16) or the oppressive (EAR), and the domain pRPS5A promoter.
10.3.2 Is the insertion wholly or partly present in GMPs and how is this determined?
Answer: As a whole, through PCR.
10.3.3 How many copies of the insert are present in the plant?
Answer: Not known.
10.3.4 Is the insert nuclear or extranuclear localized?
Answer: Nuclear
10.3.5 Is the stable insertion site?
Answer: Yes
10.3.6 Is the absence of the vector in the GGP determined? If so, consult the method
used and the results.
Answer: Yes, the agrobacteria are removed before the seed is planned. First, the
seeds were disinfected by means 70% ethanol, and then a 2% chlorine solution. At
the time of plating of the seeds is in addition to the antibiotic selection markers are
also time carmine was added to the agrobacteria. Plants can grow through it.
10.4 EXPRESSION
10.4.1 In which tissues or developmental stages of the plant, the new or changed
properties expressed?
Answer: In all the tissues, only during growth.
10.4.2 What is the level of expression in these tissues, and during these stages of
development, and with which method it is determined?
Answer: Not known.
10.5 DIFFERENCES OF THE WAR AND ANY UITKRUISINGSPRODUCTEN
RELATIVE TO OUTPUT TYPE PLANTS
[You will be asked for all the differences of the GGP, and any products of
outcrossing relative output plant species, which are related to the points B (data
output plant species) are listed]
10.5.1 Propagation Method and / or expensive?
Answer: Not expected to have different
10.5.2 Survivability and / or expensive?
Answer: Not expected to have different
10.5.3 Distribution Method and / or expensive?
Answer: Not expected to have different
10.5.4 Pollination Method?
Answer: Not expected to have different
10.5.5 Outcrossing?
Answer: Not expected to have different
10.5.6 Biological containment?
Answer: Not expected to have different
10.5.7 Competitive properties?
Answer: Not expected to have different
10.5.8 toxic / allergenic effects?
Answer: Not expected to have different
10.5.9 Other adverse effects?
Answer: Not expected to have different
05/10/10 Symbiotic properties?
Answer: Not expected to have different
10/05/11 Resistances / tolerances?
Answer: Kanamycin and hygromycin
5.10.12 Interaction with target organisms?
Answer: Not expected to have different
5.10.13 Interaction with non-target organisms?
Answer: Not expected to have different
10/05/14 Interactions with the abiotic environment?
Answer: Not expected to have different
5.10.15 Are there differences in the GGP relative output plant species other than
those listed above?
Answer: No
5.10.16 Description of the techniques that the GGP of the output plant species can be
distinguished
Answer: The inserted gene sequences can be connected using PCR can be detected,
so that
the GMPs of Arabidopsis wild types can be distinguished.
11. INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPOSED EXHIBITION
11.1 DESCRIPTION OF THE EXHIBITION
[You will be asked for a detailed description of the nature and purpose of the
exhibition in other words, a description of the exhibition aim of the exhibition and of
the interaction between the exhibited GMOs. Provide a drawing / map of the system
in which the GMOs are exhibited. Please state how the limitation of the system is
guaranteed. Also indicate what actions are performed on the system during the
duration of the exhibition and the containment during these operations is
safeguarded]
The aim of the exhibition is to inspire the audience and concrete contribution to
environmental and social justice. The mini-ecosystem is part of this and offers
visitors the opportunity to GMOs to see and learn about contemporary research
outside the laboratory context. See the appendix for a more detailed description of
the exhibition.
Interaction will take place between cyanobacteria and zebrafish embryos: The fish
are expected to consume the nutrients that are excreted by the bacteria. There will be
no interaction occur between plants and other organisms as plants on land area shall
stand in water while the fish embryos need to survive.
Since zebrafish embryos may be no older than 8 days to not fall under the Animal
Welfare legislation, it is important that the embryos each weekly basis. The old
embryos will be transferred to the Gorlaeus Laboratory, where they sacrificed in the
usual way. To the containment during this refresh to continue to ensure there will be
use to be made of a Sterile Connection Device (SCD). This is also called a
Tubewelder called. At the bottom of the embryo container is a closed plastic hose.
By means of the SCD, this hose in a completely sterile manner, be connected to
another hose, which in turn is connected to an empty reservoir (outside the
Errorarium), where the old embryos will be transported. The system works by the
plastic tube close to melting: first they are melted to each other, independently of
each other and then fused, so that the containment is maintained. A similar system is
located on the upper side of the embryo container in the Errorarium, with which in
the first instance a washing liquid (water with methylene blue) is flushed to the old
embryos, and the transport tank rinse. When the old embryos are removed, and the
lower connection is closed, the new load embryos via the upper SCD placed into the
reservoir. (See fig 2)
Plastic gloves are so mounted that actions can take place in the growth chamber
without the restriction is violated (see Figure 3). These activities will mainly take
place at the end of the exhibition, in the cleanup of the installation. At that time, all
of the GM material in a closed plastics box to be stopped. Through the closed glove
system, it is also possible to place objects in the errorarium without violating the
restriction. This can be done from outside the object you want to place in the glove.
Then a second glove attached to the same place as the first. At that time, the first
glove along with the object using a second hand to be released in the errorarium.
Fig. 1
Figure 2: The embryo in the Errorarium reservoir, compatible with the SCD hose.
Fig 3: The plastic protective glove, connected to the errorarium. There will be two
gloves so that both hands can work. It is possible to place objects in the errorarium
through a glove, a glove on additional (or actually) the first to place and confirm
with an extra elastishe band.
11.1. LOCATION
11.1.1. Where is the exhibition place (address and room)?
11.1.2. In which municipalities / provinces, these locations?
Answer: The Hague
11.1.3. Over what time period the exhibition?
Answer: From 16 March 2013 to 1 September 2013.
11.2. HABITAT / ECOSYSTEM
11.2.1. Varies the habitat / ecosystem during the exhibition of that organism in
which the output is normally used or found?
Answer: Yes
11.3. DISPLAY METHOD AND SCOPE
11.3.1. Acts before the exhibition:
Answer:
11.3.2. How much GMOs are exhibited?
Answer: 12 plants, 20 to 35 fish embryos with 50 to 150 per fish cyanobacteria
11.4. INPERKINGEN11.4.1. The exhibition is curtailed?
Answer: Yes, the organisms will Worde exhibited in a closed system (the
Errorarium). The ventilation will take place through a HEPA filter.
11.4.2. Methods to prevent spread of GMOs:
Answer: See question 11.4.2.
11.4.3. Expected duration of the exhibition:
Answer: 5 months
11.5 MONITORING
11.4.4. Describes the procedures for supervising the exhibition during opening hours
Answer: There will be a constant guard in the vicinity of the Errorarium. There will
also be CCTV.
11.4.5. Is the space where the exhibition is held closed after hours?
Answer: Yes
11.6. TRANSPORT
11.6.1. Is the transport of GMOs are necessary?
Yes, from the Gorlaeus Laboratories should regularly fresh, with cyanobacteria
injected zebrafish embryos to be invoked. The Errorarium derived from the
'afval'stroom contain GMO material and is sent to the lab Gorleaus returned along
the same transport process.
11.6.2. Describe the mode of transport, if different from Appendix 9 of the GMO
Decree
11.6.2.1. How are GMOs packaged?
Answer: The GMO will be transported in sealed containers full of shatter-proof
material.
11.6.2.2. How will the transport take place?
Answer: The sealed containers are then taken by car to the museum and return
carriage.
11.5. AFTER THE EXHIBITION
11.5.3. Treatment of the exhibition after the experi ¬ ment:
Answer: The GMO will first be stabilized in the closed system. The plants will be
cut and placed in an additional container. Then the whole system, in closed state to
the Gorlaeus Laboratories Leiden transported.
11.5.4. Treatment of the GMOs at the end of the experiment:
Answer: The GMOs in the laboratory in Leiden will be destroyed in accordance with
the prevailing procedures and the regular rules.
11.5.5. Type and amount of waste generated:
Answer: Approximately 2cm3 dead zebrafish embryos. 10 pots with plants.
11.5.6. Description of the proposed disposal:
Answer: The waste will be collected in the laboratory in the usual way and be
destroyed.
12. PROPOSED METHODS OF OBSERVATION DURING AND AFTER THE
EXHIBITION
Ask a monitoring plan which indicates how checks for ensuring the containment of
the system and if containment is breached, how is checked for possible effects on
humans and the environment during and after the experiment. Describe this also
which methods are used to carry out the observations.
The interactive growth chamber (the Errorarium) is a fully closed system, the air
supply and discharge will be filtered by means of HEPA filters. The Errorarium
itself is so big and heavy that it does not take away by attackers. It consists of very
strong material, which under normal conditions is unbreakable. Should Errorarium
still damaged, then the room where it is immediately closed to the public and
completely cleaned. Also will have samples taken for verification sent to the lab, to
the nature of the potential breakthrough of containment quantitatively analyze.
13. ANALYSIS OF THE LIKELY EFFECTS OF GMOS IN HUMANS AND THE
ENVIRONMENT
Enter in response to the previous questions an extensive analysis of the expected
effects of the GMO on humans and the environment with Annex II of the Directive
2001/18/EC and this belonging guideline (2002/623/EC) of the European
Commission is followed. In the analysis, both direct and indirect, immediate and
delayed effects of the GMO on humans and the environment should be considered.
The risk assessment should be performed for each GMO covered by this application
individually, and if relevant also for combinations of GMOs.
In the risk analysis, the effects of the GMOs to be considered arising from
interactions of the GMO themselves and in / the environment (s) in which they are
the described in the application launch right (could) be and constitute securities
relating to the safety of people and the environment. Annex 1 of this form are
described aspects which in any case have to be considered.
A risk assessment comprises the following components, in the order must be fully
addressed (see questions F.1 t / m F.4):
1. inventory of potential adverse effects that may occur;
2. an estimate of the probability or the possibility that these effects actually occur;
3. based on 1 and 2: an evaluation of the risks, and an assessment of the seriousness
of those risks. When estimating the severity, a comparison can be made with the
seriousness accorded to similar risks, for example in situations where similar effects
occur with non-GMO (baseline principle ').
4. in 3 if the conclusion is drawn that the risk is too high, it must be determined what
risk management measures (such as removal of inflorescences or use of isolation
distances) can be used to effectively reduce risks;
5. final conclusion of the risk assessment which identifies the risk control measures
will be applied, and a conclusion is drawn about the acceptability of risks, in
application of the risk management measures described.
F.1. Indicate under which scenario the GMOs from the exhibition can spread into the
environment.
Answer: When the Errorarium in a way that was damaged organisms escape. In this
case, the diffusion limited to the museum hall which Errorarium state. This room
would then immediately evacuated and sealed. The MVF coordinates the cleaning
and disinfection, disposal All waste containing GMO material through the waste of
Gorleaus laboratory, or any other body other comparable materials under contained
use, handling, disposal, according to its own procedures.
The Errorarium be so designed and constructed that a breach of the containment can
only happen with large external calamities or coarse vandalism, where the normal
control has not worked.
[Give the answer according to which scenarios the spread of GMOs into the
environment may occur. Explain how likely it is that diffusion takes place. The
questions F.2. t / m F.4. is requested to provide further elaboration.]
F.2 Identify potential adverse effects may be associated with exposure of humans or
the environment to the GMOs.
Answer: No adverse effects. Both the zebrafish as cyanobacteria and plants possess
no toxicity. The zebrafish and cyanobacteria are also biologically contained and will
not survive outside the Errorarium. Expected to Arabidopsis plants by the genetic
expression disturbed very little chance of survival in the natural environment. Due to
the sealed system in which the plants are located is the potential for the spread to a
large extent limited.
[Describe the effects on humans and the environment as a result of the use of GMOs
could occur. These are 'hazard identification', the following questions will be
addressed the possibility that these "hazards" actually occur.]
F.3. Provide an estimate of the probability that the F.2. described adverse effects will
actually occur.
Answer: The organisms are completely sealed in Errorarium, allowing direct contact
between the public and the GMOs be excluded. Only in exceptional cases it may be
broken containment: In a major disaster [remember the destruction of the building of
the GEM] can Errorarium damaged. For vandalism, where the normal monitoring
exploited stake would be willfully damaged during maintenance, such as the weekly
changing of fish and algae were procedural act mistakes can be made. These
procedures will be trained prior to the exhibition. For all three options is unlikely.
[Create a reasoned assessment of the chances of at F1 and F2 described aspects. It
must also specify the number of animals used and the dosage to be considered.]
F.4. Describe the risks that may occur as a result of the application of the GMO, the
effects of any risk control measures are taken.
Answer: Since the organisms in a fully enclosed housing are housed is the chance of
escape to a minimum. The consequences of that would occur if one of the GMOs
beyond the closed growth chamber hits are also expected to be minimal: All the
organisms are indeed biologically contained.
[Describe the risks in such a way that it becomes clear how the risks by risk
management can be reduced.]
Appendix 1. CONCLUSIONS OF POTENTIAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
In Annex II, point D1 of the Directive, a number of points that are listed, where
appropriate, serve as a basis for conclusions on the potential environmental effects of
the proposed release of GMOs into the environment. All these points must be in the
conclusions of the risk analysis are taken into consideration.
1. Likelihood of the GMO to become persistent and invasive natural habitats under
the conditions of the proposed release (s).
Answer: Very unlikely. (See question 5.6.2)
2. Selective advantage or disadvantage conferred to the GMO to be transferred and
the likelihood of this becoming realized under the conditions of the proposed release
(s).
Address for correspondence:
E-mail address:
SIGNATURE
Appendix 7 –
SUPERPLANTS: TOWARD A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE?
WHAT: Yes Naturally organizes in collaboration with BioSolar Cells 26 a
symposium on March 19, 2013, in the auditorium of the Gemeentemuseum The
Hague (pax 200).
The Sun is an endless open source of energy. This fact has been ‘known’ to plants
and microorganisms for billions of years. Through the process of photosynthesis
they transfer solar energy into chemical energy. This ‘natural’ system of
photosynthesis, however, is not as efficient as it would appear. Only about 1 to 2%
of the Sun’s light is being captured as usable energy.
BioSolar Cells is a scientific and technological research project that is
looking into possible solutions to the multiple crises of food, energy and climate.
Keeping in mind the much-desired transition from a ‘fuel-based’ to a ‘bio-based’
economy – that runs on plant and solar energy. BioSolar Cells aims at exploring the
possibilities of photosynthesis. If we would better understand photosynthesis as a
biological system, could we then render that system more efficient in living
organisms (plants, algae, cyanobacteria)? But also in artificial systems? Next, which
of the many advanced technologies would we use and how? Biotech, nanotech,
process-tech: is there any preference? If yes, why? Besides how do feel about
modifying existing life forms (bio-based)? Should there be any restrictions,
regulations, a limit? Can we even soundly assess the consequences? And what about
letting nature inspire our way of designing artificial systems (bio-inspired)?
After all, technology serves as a key facilitator to more and more
developments. Still, money and legislation play a major role in the use and
availability of technology. These two factors are most evident when it comes to
Intellectual Property Rights (IRPs) and market access resulting in the exclusion of
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small and local players. In turn, these factors are deeply influenced by society. That
is why this symposium will focus on public involvement, transparency, and societal
momentum.
TARGET GROUP: green organizations, environmental activists, students, support
base of: Jonge Akademie, KNAW, Rathenau Institute, Ministry of ELI, AMOLF,
Villa Ockenburgh, Quartair, Museon, WUR, LU, LEI