Luminescense at last

USDA approves; indigenous views

From the USDA application 22-161-01rsr, 9/23/2023.¹

I invested in the Glo-Plant on a crowdfunding site, several years ago (2013 or so), hoping in return to get the glow in the dark plants that they promised were under development and near certain success. During that time, Kickstarter blocked their sale of the plant fearing the unknown, further setting back the fundraising for the company. In the end, despite raising half a million dollars they ran out of money before they could produce a glowing plant and they announced they were quitting.² I counted my $100 as a contribution to the process of science. It seems that the energy to produce the light was far more than the plant could produce which required energy far beyond its normal sustainable energy production.

Now, it appears that the use of a different enzyme and mode of action from a naturally luminescent mushroom will be more successful than the energy demanding luciferase of the firefly used by the first experiment. The luciferin monooxygenation process of a mushroom has been sufficient to cause the plant to emit a low level green glow in the dark.³ (You may recognize the similarity with luciferin and Lucifer and suspect there is a derivation from the term for “devil” to this fire creating substance, and you would be right.)⁴

In September 6, 2023, Keith Wood the representative of Bio-Life in Ketchum, Idaho received a kind of approval from USDA. This approval is simply that the plant was determined not to be a potential plant pest. The request was made in 2022 and in September 2023, the agency responded in a letter saying the plant was not a potential pest, thus it was not subject to the The Plant Protection Act of 2000 (7 U.S.C. §§ 7701 et seq.). This statute is intended to protect crops from invasive plants that might threaten their production. So our legal framework does not really care about the long term impacts of release (unless it is a food crop, or if it might cross pollinate with indigenous varieties of plants). This would require Congress to think about it and then see if it had a substantial effect on interstate commerce (which is a low bar).

The company calls this Autoluminescence rather than bioluminescense which suggests some self-generated chemical reaction. And there is some truth to that, in that the description says that the enzyme regenerates and is able to continue creating the chemical reaction that causes the faint glow of light in the dark.

Instead of the firefly luciferase enzyme used to create the light, a mushroom that was first discovered and published in Nature’s Mycologia journal in 2010⁵ was successfully used. (There are 71 fungi that are luminescent, we have now discovered.)

So this is quite exciting, but let’s look behind the curtain and see how this is made.

How they ensure gene engineering success

The challenge of genetic engineering is that point where the new genetic sequence (nucleotides) are inserted, deleted, etc. and you need to know if it is actually successfully deployed. To do that various marker genes are attached to the inserted genes that can be identified by exposing the plant to something like a pesticide. It operates a lot like the Roundup Ready product, where the company creates a patented line of crop seeds that have a built in gene that resists the Roundup Ready pesticide, and it is extremely effective at killing the weeds the farmer wants to eradicate, while leaving the crop plants unharmed.

One of the clever ways that Monsanto polices its patented crops is to go into the fields of farmers suspected of surreptitiously planting Monsanto’s seeds (who are therefore not paying the hefty licensing fees) and spraying the plants with Roundup Ready. If they survive then they have the resistant gene patented by Monsanto. Ample evidence to start a patent infringement claim against the farmer (despite any trespassing crime against Monsanto which pales in comparison to the fines for a patent infringement award).

So Bio-life uses a different resistance gene, but the same mechanism of detecting the presence of the gene they hope to deploy in the Petunia. While the gene is being inserted it is marked with another gene for antibiotic resistance to kanamycin and neomycin.⁶ Then at some point in the seeds growth, the antibiotics are applied to the seeds and the survivors are the ones that have effectively deployed the new gene that will make the plant glow. This also gives the inventors a handy tool for enforcing their patent by spraying these antibiotics on suspected infringing plants! Ample evidence to begin a patent infringement case. While I support the Constitutionally-based incentive for patent holders to profit their inventions, and for the need to police their patents, I am not as enthusiastic about the widespread use of antibiotics to do the policing.

Is there a scenario where antibiotic resistance inserted into plants might become a public health problem? Presumably we have trusted USDA to protect us from genetically engineering plants and animals (along with FDA), but there are cases of transpecies gene transfer, but so far not with plants, that we know. The first insect resistant genetically engineering plant was developed using a gene from a common bacteria found in the soil (trans-phyla gene transfer). There does not appear to be a pathway to a dangerous outcome, but it is something about which we should keep some vigilance.

What is an Indigenous worldview of genetically engineering nature?

Each Tribal Nation has their own worldview.

Some common threads among Indigenous worldviews are the closeness to the earth and the environmental process and being a part of the ecology not adversarial with it. The trees, birds, deer, corn — the biome— are family. Each Tribe may hold sacred specific family members. One way of thinking about this is to look at how Tribal Nations have taken steps to protect their family from the threat of genetically modifying them.

For example, the White Earth band of Ojibwa⁷ have had an ordinance to protect their indigenous rice that grows along wetlands adjacent to the Great Lakes for decades. They confronted the University of Minnesota which was conducting genetically modified rice experiments taking place just across the bay from the White Earth band of Ojibwa’s sacred indigenous rice. (They came to the rice historically because they were told in a vision to go where food grows on the water, and so rice is integral to their culture.)

Rice is particularly susceptible to alterations to its germ seed, not just its somatic cells, meaning future generations of rice would be forever altered and this is far more likely with rice than other crops. The White Earth band of Ojibwa’s ordinance prohibited any GM rice from being planted within a certain distance of the sacred indigenous rice.

The indigenous corn of Mexico was thought to have been contaminated by GM corn but that research proved not to be repeatable.⁸ That said, in 2020, Mexico still continued its ban on GM corn out of an abundance of caution.⁹

Another example is the Northwest Tribal Nations who want to protect indigenous salmon, considered to be ancestors, from contamination with genetically modified salmon.¹⁰

Africa could use the increased crop production brought by genetically modifed crops but they do not want the hefty licensing costs, the inability to save seed from one season to the next that comes with licensing agreements, nor do they want their indigenous varieties contaminated. But in 2022, Kenya finally weighed the options and lifted a ban on GM crops, there has been a concerted effort to protect indigenous varieties of crops.¹¹

Traditional ecological knowledge is shared and the idea of licensing a crop with a profit goal, as well as preventing anyone from collecting the seeds for next year’s planting, is anti-thetical to traditional farmers as well as indigenous people.

In general a worldview that is mostly shared by indigenous people is that everything in nature has the right to exist and to enjoy its existence. To the extent that genetically modified plants and organisms emerge they, too, have a right to exist. New species have emerging overtime naturally. But the indigenous varies also have a right to exist, unharmed and unaltered by GM plants. This view may be shared by some but not all.

In cases like the salmon, putting GM salmon in the waters would contaminate the indigenous salmon permanently. So it is very difficult to allow both to exist in this environment. The developers never consulted with the Northwest Tribes about this idea, and by treating Native People as invisible and destroying existing native Salmon, the federal government is complicit again in acts of colonization and its genocidal consequences.

Pandora’s Plant Box

If there is a Pandora’s box for genetically engineered plants, then USDA is holding the box lid open. If the only test for acceptability for releasing a newly created novelty non-crop plant into the environment is whether it has the potential to be a plant pest, that is not comforting.

Although we know the main mechanism for the development of this plant the inventor has made the actual nucleotide sequence “confidential business information” (CBI) which is redacted from the application to USDA.¹² So we have limited information about its true mechanism of propagation, other than the little more than the brief explanation in this article.

Probably the most revealing part of this new announcement is that antibiotic resistant genes are carried in all of these plants as markers, and being vigilant as more plants are approved by USDA is important for us all.

That said, if you want to get one of these plants, I cannot say that I blame you.¹³

Blame it on Lucifer-ase.

1. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/biotechnology/regulatory-processes/rsr-table/rsr-table

2. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/whatever-happened-to-the-glowing-plant-kickstarter/523551/

3. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/pdf/rsr/22-161-01rsr-review-submission.pdf

4. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/luciferin

5. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3852/09-197

6. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/pdf/rsr/22-161-01rsr-review-submission.pdf

7. https://www.centerforenvironmentalrights.org/rights-of-manoomin

8. https://academic.oup.com/book/7601/chapter-abstract/152610634

9. https://www.cato.org/blog/navigating-maize-mexicos-gm-corn-ban

10. https://ecotrust.org/northwest-tribes-and-genetically-engineered-salmon-an-interview-with-valerie-segrest/

11. https://www.voanews.com/a/kenyan-museums-farmers-conserve-indigenous-seeds-as-gmos-are-legalized-/6803306.html

12. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/biotechnology/regulatory-processes/rsr-table/rsr-table

13. https://light.bio/beauty-and-science/