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[SANET-MG] comment on transgenes in mexican maize
September 6, 2005
Prof. Joe Cummins
“A comment on “Transgenes in Mexican maize: Desirability or inevitability”
The article “Transgenes in Mexican maize: Desirability or inevitability”
by Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Gardens appeared in today’s
Proceedings of the National academy of Sciences early addition. Raven is
an advocate for genetically modified (GM) crops and for the Monsdanto
Corporation. The article contains the comment "Whether or not transgenes
are present in landraces in Oaxaca at
present, they will inevitably be found in them as time passes, because
of the
nature of the indigenous agriculture I have just described. There they will
persist if they confer a selective advantage on the plants in which they
occur,
or they may disappear if they do not confer such an advantage in the
prevailing
conditions. Such genes are no more ‘‘invaders’’ into the populations
concerned than any other genes, and the avoidance of such value-laden
terms would presumably assist in the objective conduct of scientific
discourse
about the situation. Similarly,the principles of population genetics
certainly do not indicate that they would ‘‘disrupt’’ the germplasm of the
maize populations they might enter"
It is worth pointing out that Raven’s view of population genetics seems
unconventional. My understanding of population genetics is that once a
gene is fixed in a population , as in the case of the transgenes in
maize landraces, in the absence of selection the gene reaches the stable
Hardy-Wienberg equilibrium. Only if the gene is deleterious to maize
will it disappear from the population. The view that genes reach
equilibrium in the absence of selection is consistent with the
principles of population genetic while the principles of population
genetics don’t seem to make statements about genome disruption. However,
the loss of a gene fixed in a population certainly implies that the
transgene must have done something wrong to the maize.
Reference
Peter H. Raven Transgenes in Mexican maize: Desirability or
inevitability? Perspective Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA,
10.1073/pnas.0506082102 Published online before print September 6, 2005
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