-Caveat Lector-
> Wednesday, July 21, 1999
>
> Radiation used to develop
> varieties of plants geneticist
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------- By Dick Ahlstrom, Science Editor
>
> Consumers seem frightened of genetically engineered foods but
> indifferent to foods altered by genetic mutation. Plant
> specialists regularly use radiation and mutagenic chemicals to
> develop new plant varieties, according to a plant geneticist from
> Teagasc.
>
> Most beers on the market are made using a barley variety produced
> in 1965 by x-ray induced mutation, said Dr Beant Ahloowalia of
> Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority. The
> technique involved using exposure to powerful chemicals or
> radiation to cause unpredictable breaks in a plant's genetic code
> which may then recombine to produce new traits.
>
> The technique differs from genetic engineering which involves
> inserting genes, often from another species, into a plant or
> animal in the expectation that the recipient will take on the new
> trait given by the gene. Mutation is far less targeted, but it
> also could produce new traits. The public seemed largely unaware
> of its use, Dr Ahloowalia told delegates yesterday at the 11th
> International Congress on Radiation Research in UCD.
>
> "You can mutate or you can put in a transgene, but the public
> acceptance of mutation is much better than with transgenes," he
> said. `In the absence of the acceptance of GM foods, the process
> of mute genesis allows the development of novel varieties."
> Unlike GM technology, mutation technology is freely available to
> any researcher via UN agencies.
>
> More than 2,000 important crops and ornamental plants have been
> developed using mutation, including new rice varieties, short
> stem grains, tomato, pepper and potato varieties.
>
> Another significant crop modified by mutation is the sunflower.
> Mutated varieties produced oil which was better at helping to
> reduce cholesterol in the diet. There was also the celebrated
> mutation of a Japanese pear variety in an orchard adjacent to a
> nuclear reactor, he said. A fungus struck the orchard and the
> crop was lost except for one tree near the reactor, which had a
> healthy crop. It was found to be a radiation induced mutation
> which conferred resistance to the pathogen.
>
> "Most mutants are degenerate and worthless," said Dr Alan Cas
> sells of UCC. These were quickly discarded but promising
> varieties were tested to ensure they were safe for consumption.
> "What the consumer wants is reassurance."
>
> Mutation was useful for correcting a characteristic defect or for
> introducing novel characteristics, he said. The mutant was
> usually compared to the source plant when assessing new or
> altered traits, for example the plant's response to pathogens.
>
> If plant held promise it was put through a battery of
> high-technology tests which scanned its new genetic make-up. This
> "data mining" allows researchers to test unexpected changes in
> the genetic code. Plants could be selected for disease or drought
> resistance after irradiation as a way to develop resistant
> varieties, said Dr S. Moham Jain of the University of Helsinki.
>
> He described inoculating 400 strawberry plants with a fungus; 20
> were found to have developed resistance to the fungus. They were
> also found to have acquired resistance to drought.
> Wednesday, July 21, 1999
>
> Scientists debate level
> of tolerance to radiation
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------- By Dick Ahlstrom
>
> The argument that there is no safe level of exposure for nuclear
> radiation is wrong and is not supported by scientific studies,
> according to a US researcher who said that cells were very
> efficient at repairing radiation damage.
>
> "A single fallacy is often more acceptable than a complicated
> truth," said Dr Otto Raabe of the University of California,
> Davis. He was addressing a radiation conference in Dublin
> yesterday organised by the Dublin Institute of Technology during
> a session on the "linear no-threshold" debate.
>
> The linear no-threshold (LNT) theory assumes that any exposure to
> radiation carries a risk of developing cancer. It is widely
> applied by radiological protection agencies and endorsed by the
> International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP).
>
> "The evidence for the threshold has been known for a long time,"
> Dr Raabe said. A new Russian study pointed towards a threshold
> for radiation, a level that the body could tolerate without
> subsequent cancers. Breaks in the genetic code inside the cell
> were commonplace and quickly repaired. On average there are up to
> 150,000 breaks per cell daily. "We already have a background of
> DNA breaks," he said, and any contribution to this total by
> radiation was minor.
>
> "There are still uncertainties that we can't work out because of
> statistical difficulties," he acknowledged, but there was no
> connection between threshold and risk. Dr Jack Valentin,
> scientific secretary of the ICRP, defended the LNT theory. "There
> is no better hypothesis," he said.
>
> There was no dispute that radiation could cause DNA damage and
> that such damage was an initiating event in cancer development.
> Single-strand breaks were easily repaired, but studies had shown
> it was not so with double-strand breaks. He referred to a 1996
> study which suggested that very low radiation doses could induce
> cancers in utero and a UN study soon to be published indicated
> that cancers could be caused at very low radiation doses. Both
> sides were hampered by a lack of statistical power to determine
> what happened with low-dose exposures.
Both from Irish Times
A<>E<>R
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