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UNRAVELING THE SECRET OF LIFE: DNA self-duplication, the basic precept of biotechnology, is denied

by Barry Commoner
GeneWatch
May-June 2003

References

Unraveling the DNA Myth: The Spurious Foundation of Genetic Engineering

by Barry Commoner
Harper's Magazine
February 2002

Synopsis
References

A Work in Progress

"Unraveling the DNA Myth," published in the February 2002 issue of Harper's, was an unfinished work, for the readers' response was likely to further illuminate the topic. The article argued that the basic precept of molecular genetics - that a DNA gene is the exclusive source of the genetic information that governs the inheritance of a particular trait - has been contradicted by a growing number of discordant experimental results showing that proteins can contribute genetic information as well. This is a crucial distinction: If genes exclusively govern inheritance, this uniquely biological capability is reduced to a property of DNA, a non-living chemical substance. If, on the other hand, the genetic information carried by DNA is commingled with that contained in the three-dimensional structure of proteins, then inheritance is a collective property of the vastly more complex mixture of these crucial cellular components and may well be inseparable from the living cell itself.

These conflicting concepts have equally divergent practical consequences. DNA's presumed monopoly over genetic governance justifies the belief that a gene artificially transferred from one species to another will behave in this new host - for example in soybeans genetically modified with a herbicide resistant gene - exactly as it did in its natural species. On the other hand, if proteins as well as DNA contribute jointly to the flow of genetic information in the cell, transferred into the alien environment of soybean proteins, the bacterial gene is likely to give rise to a new - and unpredictable - genetic outcome. Indeed, recent tests have shown that this is true: the bacterial DNA does produce a herbicide resistant protein in the soybean, and an unexpected alteration of the soybean's own DNA as well.

Thus, the article challenged the proponents of molecular genetics and biotechnology to at least consider, and possibly express, their own position on these disparate concepts. In the same way, the general reader would confront a clash between the article's and the news media's accounts of the recent triumphs of biotechnology, an industry that relies on the belief in the exclusive genetic role of the DNA gene. The responses to the article could therefore serve as a kind of poll on the status of molecular genetics among these different readers.

Fortunately, the written response to its publication has been sufficiently strong to generate a meaningful test of the article's conclusions about molecular genetics and its application to biotechnology. What follows is an effort to analyze the readers' views about the issues on which they have so generously commented and, at least in this way, to respond to the communications that were far too numerous to answer individually. (As noted in the accompanying report, many of the responses also expressed a judgment - often quite vigorously - about the value of the article and about the wisdom, on the part of Harper's, of publishing it. A second report, below, summarizes the distribution of these judgmental opinions among several subsets of the respondents.)

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