Perfectly viable, right, land in our traps and, and grows, and grew quite well.
Now we had any ecologist with us,
John Suran, who's here in at UC San Diego in the, in the ecology, department.
And we brought John on obviously because we wanted to
specifically address the question of what happens with the natural ecosystem when
a transgenic algae lands in that.
And John did a really important experiment, and that is that he went and
got water.
From five local water bodies.
And I, and I say water bodies, not lakes or rivers,
because we're here in San Diego which is, you know, more or less the desert.
And so our water bodies are not natural lakes,
they're reservoirs or manmade lakes.
So he went and got water from five of those.
Three of them have pretty clean water.
And then one of them has a little bit of nitrogen in.
And then the fifth one was completely nutrified, meaning that there was,
because of where that where that reservoir is
placed there's runoff from agriculture that gets into it.
And from, and from houses as well, it's not, not, not just ag.
But there, there's runoff of so that had relatively high nitrogen and
high phosphate in it.
So what does that mean?
That means when you went to that lake it was already pretty thick with algae.
The other ones were pretty clean.
So if you looked at them, they were pretty clear water.
Why is water clear in one lake and green in another?
It's simply the nitrogen and phosphate content of it.
So here in California,
if you go up to lake Tahoe it's famously very deep blue water.
That, the reason it's blue water is because it's an alpine lake,
it's high up and there's not a lot you know industry and houses around it.
So the, there's not a lot of nitrogen and phosphate that run into that lake.
It started to be a problem lately because septic tanks that people have,
who build cabins around the lake, that stuff eventually leeches down and
starts to get into the water and and so now there's been
some debate on how we control that so that it doesn't turn green.
So at any rate, John went and got these waters, and then what he
did was he inoculated, he brought them back, put them in a greenhouse and
then he inoculated into those our GM strain at continuing,
you know, at, in, in a series with ever increasing concentration of the algae.
And, and the idea behind that was one okay.
If, if you had an algae escape but let's just say you know a,
a, a pretty small amount of it escape.
Would that be able to get in and colonize these bodies of water?
Well what happens if you had a massive you know, escape, and I don't know why.
There was an earthquake and it cracked one of your ponds and
it, all of that pond ran down and got into the water.
So we also did some where you inoculated it really heavy.
And what he found out was that the GM algae, or the parent wild type strain, so
it was the senedesmus that we had and so we grew not only the GM strain, we also
grew the wild type non-transgenic parent side by side with it out there because,
again, we wanted to test how does a GM strain do compared to a wild type.
So, the GM and wild type grew fine.
The gene stayed in them.
The GFP continue to express for two months.
So that was good.
We could show that we had a stable phenotype and it got outside.
And then like I say really interestingly put into these waters the GM
algae could grow so you know, that, that, that's what you'd expect.
We, we, we hadn't you know sort of beat it up so
bad with the GM trait that we put in that it was incapable of growing.
It grew in those strains.
But importantly it could not out compete the wild type in any of those ponds,
even the ones that were eutrophied, even the ones that had a great nitrogen and
phosphate source.
It sort of got in,
it grow, it grew, it colonized, but it never overtook the other algae.
Now as I say not unexpected result,
because remember those other algae that, that are in those lakes and
reservoirs here in San Diego have been there for many, many, many, many years.
So they have been selected over many seasons over many years to
survive in that water with the set of nutrients that had is,
and the set of light that it gets and the temperature that it gets.
And so that those have, they have a clear advantage.
So when we put in the GM strain it's kind of expected.
That, that they really didn't do any better.
But it's kind of nice to know that you now it's, it's one of things that we've got to
check, we've got to be very careful before we ever you know release GM you know,
algae outside.
You know, you hear a lot of hysteria from people which is not science based,
where they say oh, you're going to make a Frankenalgae.
You know, you'll make some algae that'll go out and take over the ecosystem.
And the truth of the matter is that, that's simply not true.
There, there's no domesticated species that we
ever release anywhere that goes and it takes over a natural environment.
And there's a really simple biological reason for that.
And that is that a domesticated species specifically means that you have
taken a wild type species and converted part of its metabolic flux, so part
of the energy that it makes, into making something which is beneficial for you.
So the simplest way to think about this is corn,
which is a grass, right, in traditional corn we have domesticated that so
it makes this enormous cobb, you know, with lots of seed on it.
Well when you do that you put a lot of your energy, you know,
the plants energy, a lot of it goes into making that really big cobb.
That doesn't make it more competitive in the environment with other grasses.
In fact you know I, I always tell people well look you're worried about GM algae I
understand that, we, we need to patch it up we need to be careful.
But you honestly think if you took a handful of you know American
domesticated corn seed and went down to the jungle in the Amazon and you know and
threw that seed all around that you'd come back in a couple years and
the whole place would be GM corn or corn.
No.
What would happened is, you'd throw that seed out there and all the animals there
would say, thanks very much for lunch, and they would eat it immediately.
And if, by chance, it did grow up, it would very quickly be
attacked by fungus and bacteria and all the rest of this stuff, because it
hasn't evolved to have a competitive advantage in that specific environment.
So, we always have that going for us in, in, in any kind of G.M.
strain that we put outside.
All of the things that we do, all of the domestication that we do that makes it
more beneficial for us, makes it less beneficial for the environment.
Where we have had problems and this continues to be a problem to this day,
is bringing in non native species, right?
And anybody who happens to be a scuba diver knows that if you now go to
the Caribbean and go scuba diving there, low and
behold there are lion fish everywhere.
They are not native to the Caribbean, they showed up because people bought them for
their aquarium because they are kind of cool looking fish and when they got
bored with them rather than you know kill them they decided oh well just go let them
go in the ocean and they did that and now they have colonized the entire Caribbean.
So why did they survive and you know and others not?
The reason for that is because where they come from which is Indonesia,
over there there are natural predators.
You know they evolved and they, they grew up there over tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands of years, and as they did, even though they
have these nice little toxic spines and can't be eaten by you know every fish.
Some fish have, some other predators have figured out how to eat them.
And those predators do not exist in the Caribbean.
So when you bring something like that in, a non-native species that's already gone
through all of this selection to survive in an environment and
has a nice little thing like a lionfish do which is their beautiful you know
fins with their little toxic ends on them, then that does cause trouble.
So I'm much less worried about a GM algae you know escaping and causing trouble,
as I am a non-native species of algae brought into a new environment.
So I think the bad idea is to go bioprospecting for some algae in Utah.
You know, and
then bring it over here to California, that might cause problems, right?
But, but the GMs, at least to date, you know,
look like they're going to behave just the way GM crops do.
Which is they're going to survive outside.
They're going to be stable, but
they're not going to dominate any environment that they have to get at it.
And I should say, they are going to get out.
Right?
This, this idea and I've heard many people you know, sort of say, oh,
well, what we need to do is have these, you know, these GM algae and
double secret probation, you know, where we keep them inside photobioreactors and
then keep that inside a secondary containment.
So if you do that, you,
you, you probably reduce the likelihood of having a large spill.
But you're still going to get small stuff out there.
That's just the way it goes.
Nothing stays in captivity forever, right?
Anybody who's ever had any pet snakes knows that,
and I've had many you know, king snakes.
They they're beautiful little animals and you put them in a thing and
then somehow they miraculously get out.
Algae would do the same thing okay?
So it's, it's we have to plan that these things are going to escape.
And then they have to make sure that they do not cause problems to the environment.
And we're on our way to do that, okay, enough about that one.
Various approaches to growing, harvesting, and processing algae are complicated
enough, yes they are but from the lectures I am given the impression that anyone
pursuing bio-fuels from algae will need to have genomic skills, do you agree?