As an editor
Russia seems to Want to Allow Genetically Edited organisms
Olga Dobrovidova, N+1
Daria Spasskaya took part in the preparation of the material
The Russian government on Monday approved the federal scientific and technical program for the development of genetic technologies for 2019-2027. Don't be intimidated by the bureaucratic name. This is a rather curious document from which you can find out not only how much budget money the state plans to spend on this, but also what it thinks about genetic technologies themselves. For example, in Russia, where GMOs are banned, it seems that genetically edited organisms will be allowed. That is, we won't see AquAdvantage salmon, but CRISPR potatoes or spicy tomatoes, maybe we'll eat more.
The most interesting paragraph of the 57-page document for us is this one:
Existing varieties and hybrids of agricultural plants and animal breeds were obtained as a result of long-term selection aimed at the formation of the required characteristics. Genetic technologies involving the targeted modification of the plant's or animal's own genes without introducing foreign genetic material give such the same end result, since changes are made to one or more of the desired genes.
These words are confusingly similar to the formulations with which American regulators, unlike European ones, refuse to recognize genetically edited GMO organisms – and do not introduce any special regulation for them. Konstantin Severinov, a professor at Skoltech and Rutgers University, confirmed to N+1 that the Russian authorities and scientists working on state policy in this area are really trying to legally separate the concepts of GMOs and genetically edited organisms – precisely on this basis.
If the Russian state eventually takes this position, then, among other things, it will listen to its own scientists, who really do not want genetically edited organisms to suffer the fate of genetically modified ones.
Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation Andrey Fursenko previously stated to N+1 that the issue of regulating CRISPR organisms in Russia should be decided by the scientific community together with politicians. Since Russia, like the USA (but not the EU), has not ratified the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity, theoretically the country can take any decision on this.
But there are some mutually exclusive paragraphs here: last month, the president signed a decree, in which, in particular, the Russian Federation was supposed to join the The Cartagena Protocol. As N+1 explained earlier Alexander Ignatov, Director of Science at the PhytoEngineering Research Center, formally, the identity of GMOs and CRISPR organisms can be deduced from this protocol, as stated by the European Court.
The government imagines the results of the program quite curiously: among other things, these are at least 30 lines of plants and animals, including aquaculture, created with the help of genetic technologies. Ten out of 30 of these lines according to the program implementation plan should appear by 2020, that is, right now someone already has to bring them to mind.
Moreover, we are clearly talking not only about scientific developments, for which GMOs are also allowed today – these lines, according to the program, should be "in demand by organizations (including the real sector of the economy)."
What are these organisms? For example, these are at least four crops from a certain list of major agricultural crops (such a document could not be found, but wheat, potatoes, sugar beet and barley are given as an example) obtained using genetic editing and "characterized by improved economically valuable traits." They are also fast-growing tree lines and industrial plants for plantation cultivation and farm animals resistant to viral diseases.
Are there such a number of genetically edited organisms in the bins of Russian scientists (for comparison, the compilers of the program believe that there are "more than 20" such organisms in the USA)? Dmitry Miroshnichenko, senior researcher at the BIOTRON Plant Expression Systems and Genome Modification Laboratory at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who deals with the CRISPR potato, told N+1 that he only knows about 2-3 lines that could fit the formulation of the program, but "maybe someone else doing something."
"If transgenic [organisms], then yes, quite, and here in different applications, this is both agriculture and veterinary medicine... Laboratories have been doing this for 30 years, there is something," Miroshnichenko said.
Severinov sees no problem in creating the number of lines necessary for reporting, given that even his students are doing this in practice now. The question is what these lines will be and whether they will turn out to be "banal or useless". "Unfortunately, the main problems in Russia are with the formulation of tasks," the scientist said.
Anyway, according to the estimate given in the document, in 2018, more than 22 billion budget rubles were spent on genetic research (that's right, without clarification). "Since 2014, the Russian Scientific Foundation has supported more than 300 different projects related to genetic technologies on a competitive basis. Some of these projects have now been successfully completed. According to preliminary estimates, the total amount of project financing for all the years of implementation is about 5 billion rubles," Andrey Blinov, Deputy General Director of the Russian National Fund, told N+1.
The new program as a whole is estimated at 127 billion rubles, 111 of which will be allocated from the state budget.
In addition, you can find many different interesting pieces in the document. Thus, Russian scientists will have to create at least five new vaccines against dangerous infections and at least two medicines "to overcome drug resistance of pathogenic biological agents that have passed the stage of preclinical trials."
The state also wants to get a prototype of a domestic device for high-performance genomic sequencing. For reference, there are quite a lot of such sequencing technologies (NGS) on the market now: pyrosequencing, which began the era of rapid development of genome research, is rapidly being replaced by cheaper technologies, such as synthesis sequencing from Illumina and semiconductor sequencing on the Ion Torrent platform (both technologies are popular in Russia).
If you start comparing prices, then the low price of the device can be more than compensated by high prices for reagents for sample preparation and reading of molecules, therefore, it is more reasonable to choose the technology depending on the task – for example, the size of the genome, the presence of repeating sequences in it, whether it is necessary to assemble a DNA sequence de novo (or there is a reference sequence).
In Russia, with the cheaper technologies, the number of studies using NGS is growing, but it is still quite expensive: the price of "powerful" sequencers that allow reading large genomes ranges around several million rubles - nevertheless, there are already quite a lot of them in Russia.
The appearance of the "pocket sequencer" MinION from Oxford Nanopore Technologies can change the situation: a starter kit for working in It is available in Russia for several thousand dollars, depending on the configuration (80-200 thousand rubles), but its capabilities are quite modest – however, the craftsmen even read the human genome on it. You can learn more about the development of DNA sequencing methods here.
Also – and this is amazing, considering that at the state level this topic did not sound at all – the government document seems to have a reference to Jiankui He's experiment with genetically edited children.
"Making precise changes to the genome can give human cells resistance to viruses. It has become possible to purposefully turn off the receptor, which is one of the main ways for HIV infection to enter the cells of the immune system," the document says. This is exactly what He tried to do in his project.
An attentive reader of this text (thanks to him for this) noted that we can also talk about "turning off" CCR5 in lymphocytes using zinc–finger nucleases (ZFN) - such methods of HIV therapy using the patient's own edited lymphocytes, which do not involve editing the embryo genome, are already undergoing clinical trials.
One of the sections is "editing of genetic variants and genome defects leading to diseases with the described genetic etiology", without specifying, however, which editing is in question – somatic cells or human embryos. As we know, editing the human embryo genome in Russia is not exactly banned; when N+1 tried to find out from the Ministry of Health how the proposals on this issue that he was supposed to prepare were doing, we were refused a comment with reference to article 40 of the law on mass media – that is, this information "contains information constituting a state, commercial or other secret specially protected by law". We do not yet know all the details of scientific research within the framework of the new program: the Kurchatov Institute Research Center, designated as the main scientific organization, will have to prepare a draft comprehensive plan of scientific research on it together with the Russian Academy of Sciences. The press service of SIC N+1 has not yet answered the question of when this plan will be ready.
"It's good that [this program] exists, because without it it would be worse. Its goal is, in particular, to create a certain number of world-class centers, and until those in power turn to the boring problems of access to reagents, access to services, openness of the country and other things, nothing world-class shines for us. In fact, we are once again rushing after the departing train," said Severinov, who participated in the development of the document.
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