BioCoder #1

“Is this Legal?”

Patrik D’haeseleer

“Is this legal?” is probably the #1 question people ask us when they hear about the Glowing Plant project (well, after “can I have one?,” of course). The short answer is yes. But the long answer is far more interesting.

Regulatory oversight in the US over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is covered by an alphabet soup of laws and agencies. Different rules apply when you are dealing with a GMO food crop such as soy (covered by the Food and Drug Administration [FDA]), a microbe, an animal, or anything that has been engineered using a plant pathogen. I would hesitate to call this a patchwork quilt of regulations, because a patchwork quilt isn’t supposed to have any holes in it, and these regulations definitely do: big, ragged, oddly shaped holes.

Most plant genetic engineering has historically been done by taking advantage of the plant pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens. You may have seen Agrobacterium at work if you’ve seen a tree with a large outgrowth on its trunk. Agrobacterium is a bacterium (duh) that infects plants. During infection, it injects some of its own DNA into the plant, subverting its host’s machinery to make a nice little home for the bacteria. Plant genetic engineers have been using that trick to their own advantage by engineering Agrobacterium to inject whatever genes they want to insert into the plant instead. However, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been understandably cautious about releasing any plant that has ...