Who owns the genetic information will own the world

Academician Konstantin Scriabin: "Who owns genetic information will own the world"
Soon people will have genetic plastic cards
Natalia Leskova, MKKonstantin Scriabin is a third–generation academician.

My father and grandfather were also academicians and also biologists. One of the Moscow streets is named in honor of his grandfather, the founder of the national helminthology, his father was an outstanding microbiologist, for many years he headed the Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Microorganisms of the Russian Academy of Sciences, now bearing his name. Scriabin III is a leading Russian geneticist, the head of a scientific center where the human genome was read for the first time in our country. Now it's time to analyze the information received. This direction of scientific research is the future, the scientist is sure.

– Konstantin Georgievich, as far as I know, you grow plants with the specified useful properties. What can they be used for? – Indeed, in the new millennium, the next generation of biotechnological plants with beneficial properties for humans has already been created.

In 2004, in order to prevent certain forms of blindness, the so-called golden rice containing beta-carotene was obtained. It is a plant pigment – the precursor of vitamin A. According to WHO estimates, 230 million children worldwide suffer from vitamin A deficiency and at least one million children a year die from diseases associated with its deficiency.

Soy with a reduced content of linolenic acid, which at the same time has herbicide resistance, has already entered the market. Soy oil produced from it belongs to healthy food products, its consumption instead of margarine, for example, reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases due to the absence of trans fatty acids. We are working on creating cultures that help protect the body from cancer. A huge number of confirmations of the benefits of such products have been collected, while there is no reliable data on the harm of GMOs.

– You are probably the only Russian scientist who is not afraid to say out loud that genetically modified products are a blessing. – Why should I be afraid to tell the truth?

Russia is the only major country today where GM products are not produced in agriculture. At the same time, we annually import and consume tens of millions of tons of meat of bulls fattened with genetically engineered soy, since there is no other in the world. The USA, Brazil, China, India have raised agriculture on genetically modified crops. Insulin, interferon, many vitamins and other drugs purchased at the pharmacy are also "mixed" on a GM basis. At the same time, no one has the idea to throw the medicine in the trash. So the widespread use of GMOs is a fait accompli. There is no need to discuss whether it is necessary or not. More than 30 years ago, at the Asilomar Conference, scientists put safety first in working with recombinant DNA. Therefore, biologists have been experimentally testing for years how harmless this or that product will be before offering it for use. I have been repeating for years: not a single plant will leave our laboratory until its complete harmlessness is proven.

– But if all this is obvious to a biologist, what are your scientific opponents guided by?– Exclusively political and material interests.

Science has nothing to do with it. At the same time, the truth is this: Russia, like no other country, needs bioengineering in agriculture, which we have completely launched. We have difficult climatic conditions, and our lands are littered with weeds like nowhere else in the world. There are only two countries – Russia and Canada – where there are unused arable lands. Another couple of years – and those countries where they are sorely lacking, can take them away from us. And other countries, such as China, are now actively buying up African lands and starting to develop them for GM crops. They are concerned about the question of how to feed their people. Apparently, there are no us. 40 percent of the potato crop in Russian fields is dying from fungal diseases and the Colorado potato beetle. Economically, these losses are measured in billions of dollars. And if you grow a new biotechnological potato variety, the Colorado potato beetle will bypass these fields. GM technologies help to get a higher yield at a lower cost - today almost all farmers understand this. And those countries where they don't realize it yet will soon turn out to be outsiders.

– Why does this topic cause such active rejection among people? – Yes, new gene technologies, indeed, cause distrust among the population.

But that's okay. The double helix of DNA was discovered by Watson and Crick in 1953 – just half a century ago, and we are already beginning to manipulate what was considered divine providence – the genome of living organisms, their hereditary information. But since then there has been a revolution: in 2000, the human genome was decoded, then a thousand genomes, and in two years such a procedure will cost a thousand dollars. And in five years, decoding the individual genome will become as commonplace as a blood test. The genomes of almost all plants will be read. Russia faces the most important problem – whether we will begin to integrate into the global process. If our country falls behind in the genetic race, the consequences will be heavier than they could be in case of a loss in the nuclear or space field. Whoever owns the genetic information will own the world. A genetic map of all the peoples of the world will be compiled in five to six years. This is strategic information, and we are also doing such work. The second priority is health, personal medicine at the genetic level. Soon, like a bank card, every citizen will receive a genetic card. Insurance companies will know all the information about a person and will be able to determine internal policy. This can lead to major social shifts and new ethical approaches. All together, this means that we are on the threshold of a powerful humanitarian revolution that will break out after the revolution in genetics. If we underestimate these phenomena, we will find ourselves on the sidelines of progress.

– How do you feel about cloning?– I was one of those scientists who developed a moratorium against him.

When some politicians shout that they will clone Lenin or Stalin, they do not understand that it is impossible to make a copy of an adult. First you need to get a baby, and God knows what will grow out of it. In other words, together with Lenin's embryo, it will be necessary to recreate the pre–revolutionary Russia in which he lived - together with his brother Sasha, Nadezhda Konstantinovna, Inessa Armand… In fact, such a clone child will turn out to be an absolutely lonely being - without a father and mother, without a family history, a stranger at this celebration of life. Why is it necessary for him to come to this difficult and often cruel world? It will be a tragedy for him.

– What is this international oncology program in which you participate?– A year ago, we became members of a consortium that includes many developed countries of the world, and each country is responsible for one type of cancer.

The project investigates more than 20 types of cancer, we are responsible for kidney cancer. The task is to jointly make 10 pairs by the end of the year: healthy – sick genome, tumor tissue and the corresponding control, normal tissue. The problem is also that the genome of a cancer cell may differ at different stages of tumor progression. Therefore, the task of histologists is to identify the tumor at the earliest possible stages, when the cell has not yet become cancerous, but is just beginning to turn into it. To catch the moment when, in fact, the origin of a cancer–affected cell occurs is an important and very difficult task. In a year or two, I think we will be able to be not just participants, but curators of such a program, taking some kind of cancer - for example, thyroid, which many residents of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia suffer from after Chernobyl. Life is short, especially in cancer patients – I hope we will save someone.

– Another program is for decoding the genome of extinct animals. Who are these dinosaurs? – These are mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, and other large animals that lived shortly before the last glaciation.

Since most of the Russian territory is located in the permafrost zone, we have plenty of such material – their DNA is perfectly preserved in the permafrost. What can not be said about dinosaurs, from which only horns and legs remained – in the sense of bones. In this sense, Russia is the homeland, or rather, the cemetery of elephants. Of course, not exactly Russia, but its current territory. And not exactly elephants… Why study them? There are many important tasks here. Firstly, in this way it is possible to trace the evolution of mammals. Secondly, it is the reconstruction of the climate, their habitat. What for? To, for example, understand why they died out, whether there is a cyclical nature in climate change, in the same global warming. The applied meaning is to reconstruct the climate, the environmental factors that affected these animals, to find out what they ate, which bacteria participated in their metabolism. According to the pollen in the lungs, it is possible to restore the flora of that time. We managed to conduct such studies on two animals – a woolly rhinoceros found on Kolyma, and a mammoth Lyuba, which was transferred to us from the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

– Why did the baby mammoth die? – It was still quite a baby, did not eat anything except mother's milk.

He died in the most dramatic way: most likely he fell into a hole or swamp and drowned. And the microorganisms in Lyuba's intestines turned out to be completely different from those of adults. Now we are trying to understand that this is the microflora that is characteristic of a mammoth drinking mother's milk, or some product of contamination from the outside.

– The fate of genetics in our country has a dramatic history. Can we say that science has won now? – Genetics is struggling through colossal thorns.

The infamous 1947 session against genetics, in fact, continues. Already other illiterate people put forward the same illiterate arguments. But despite all this, genetic engineering is developing rapidly and will soon rule the world. And the tasks here will be determined by life itself. We need to feed humanity. The earth is overpopulated, and people are already dying of hunger today. One and a half percent of six billion. the world's population is 90,000 people a year! Humanity is sick, it needs to be treated, and treated individually. And for this it is necessary to use new methods – in particular, the decoding of genetic information. But there are problems here. For example, I read your genome. Do I have the right to keep this information or not? A person has nothing more private than his genetic information, therefore, the possession of this information by another person violates the rights of the individual. This is a big ethical and legislative problem. Imagine that I can provide all the information about your possible illnesses. Do you want it or not?

– I don't know…– You see!

You don't have a definite answer. And so will the majority. If you are a civilized person, you should want to know this: after all, hereditary information is transmitted to your children. And you don't want to have sick children! If genetic analysis shows that there is a risk of transmission of a particular disease by inheritance, you can turn to artificial insemination, choose an embryo that does not contain the genes responsible for the disease, and then your children will be absolutely healthy. As you know, the son of Nicholas II, Tsarevich Alexei, had a hereditary disease – hemophilia. In our time, it would be possible to make sure that the heir to the throne was born perfectly healthy. Or another example: autistic children. The causes of autism are largely related to genes, and a woman can make a choice whether she wants to have such a child or not. But another question arises, and it is much more important: is it possible to make the child normal? This is not possible now. But a few years will pass, and it will no longer be a fantasy. This is personal medicine, which can, if not everything, but a lot.

– Maybe it's not worth asking a person if he would like to know his genome or not?– And how – forcibly?

It seems to me that the only way out is to explain to schoolchildren what the genome is and what DNA is. And to do it in a playful, interactive way, as clear and entertaining as possible, as they teach a computer.

Do you know the story of how Lysenko came to the founder of the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician V.A.Engelhardt? Lysenko says, "There is no DNA." Why are you laughing? In principle, this is exactly the same as what the current opponents of GMOs say. So, Lysenko says: "Here you are dealing with hereditary substance. Show it to me!". He is shown a test tube with pure isolated transport RNA (ribonucleic acid). And Lysenko says: "Come on, I have such (shows 5-liter) cans of acid on my shelf in the laboratory." And this man "commanded the parade" in biological science… Children should not be like Lysenko. Let them have computer games on entertaining genetics – and then a generation will grow up ready to perceive the ideas of bioengineering not as the creation of a Gorynych Snake, but as a normal, natural thing.

– And these children will be interested in decoding the genome for a thousand dollars?- Yes.

Provided that we will overcome genetic illiteracy in the same way as we eliminated the general illiteracy of the population in Russia at the beginning of the XX century, just as we provide computer literacy at the beginning of the XXI century.

– Listening to you, you start to think that absolutely everything is determined by genetics. – Of course, not all of them.

A lot depends on circumstances, on accidents, on ourselves. But as for diseases – there is a lot, indeed, heredity dictates to us. But the probability of disease is not yet a disease. Such a patient should be regularly seen by a doctor, undergo appropriate examinations and prevent illness. As they say, warned – armed. People who have knowledge about certain potential risks live longer and healthier, because they take better care of themselves. Personal medicine can also solve this problem.

But in Russia it is very difficult to do this, because if I tell a person that he has one hundredth of the probability of getting kidney cancer, then instead of going to the doctor regularly, he will rush to his grandmother for a bottle of "live" water. There is no living water, there is no Gorynych Snake. There is science and common sense. They and only they can give us a decent future.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru01.11.2010