Talking Biotech 056 Teaching Biotech with Journey of the Gene

I want to see science serve a useful purpose to improve the standard of living for all people. Hey, why is anyone fighting food advance?

A very small percentage of the world's population is fortunate enough to have the luxury of turning down food.

We've arranged a society based on science and technology in which Because nobody understands anything about science and technology. You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery.

You're listening to Talking Biotech, the weekly podcast illuminating issues in agriculture and medical biotechnology. Your questions and concerns are answered using a science-based approach with the goal of driving innovation to application with communication. Now here's Here's your host, Dr. Paul Vincelli.

Welcome to Talking Biotech Podcast, the weekly podcast where we discuss contemporary issues in science and technology with a focus on biotechnology and new innovations that can help people and the planet. My name is Paul Vincelli. I'm sitting in for Kevin Folta, and thanks to Dr. Folta for the opportunity to record today's session. And today we'll be talking about various topics, but particularly an online resource that is an excellent way to teach people about genetic engineering. Our guest today is Dr. Don Lee, who is a professor at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, and we're here to learn about his program. So welcome, Don. Thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks for the invitation, Paul. Appreciate it.

So Don, let's, if you don't mind starting with a— I noticed you're involved in the 3 pillars of the land grant mission. You have research activities, you are active in Extension, and then there's a substantial amount of your time spent in teaching, it appears. So why don't you tell the listeners something about your various professional activities to get to know you better?

Sure, okay. I started work at the University of Nebraska in 1989, and I can't even count how many years ago that is now. But I got hired really to be a genetics teacher within the College of Ag and Natural Resources. So teaching has always been the primary job I am paid to do by the taxpayers of Nebraska. And I had learned about DNA-based genetics research as a as a graduate student and as a postdoc. So I— my research at that time was focused on learning more about the genetic makeup of crop plants using DNA techniques. And then about the mid-'90s is when transgenic crops first became something farmers had to make decisions on and grow. And my colleagues in Extension said, we need a genetics teacher, Don, to partner up with us. And it was fun because a lot of folks were much more interested in genetics, the topic I was hired to teach, all around the state and all around the region. So that's when my program really kind of became the 3 pillars, as you refer to them: teaching, extension, and research. And since then, my research has— I've moved away from the discovery laboratory working with DNA And now my research is all focused on educational resource development and how well those resources might work in the hands of learners and teachers.

Great, great. Yeah, well, actually, I, you know, I'm relatively new to sophisticated genetics. I started developing outreach programs on genetic engineering about 2 and a half years ago, and I have really come to appreciate geneticists and the science of genetics greatly as I've studied various, many, many research papers and other resources. So really hats off to you for your career. So the program that really is kind of the feature for today's program is the Journey of a Gene. And I would just like to say that We in Kentucky at the University of Kentucky have experience with Journey of a Gene. A colleague of mine that you know very well, Dr. Carl Bradley, here at the University of Kentucky and I put together a program, a county agent training program using Journey of a Gene. And that was the central piece of this training that took the better part of a day. I think it was 4 or 5 hours, something like that. And we had outstanding responses from the agents. They really appreciated what they learned. So for example, a question was, or a statement in the evaluation was, the GMO in-service training increased my knowledge and understanding of GMOs. And everybody answered agree or strongly agree. So it's a really, really excellent program. So anyway, Don, why don't you describe Journey of a Gene for our listeners today?

Well, Journey of a Gene was a chance to take really support from everybody. Everybody who pays taxes to the federal government contributed to Journey of a Gene because the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, a USDA program, funded a collective research extension and education program, and we were a part of that. And what we wanted to do is, is take advantage of new technologies for delivering information. Everybody's carrying around a smartphone now, and we wanted to take resources that we had developed and other folks had developed and consolidate them into a learning environment that you could view through your smartphone, and it would, in a fairly concise way, tell the story of the journey of a gene in this case, how geneticists have discovered genes that could help a soybean plant overcome a very important disease in soybeans called sudden death syndrome. And we, with the funding, we were able to hire a graduate student, Grace Troop, and Grace put her creative work focused on the development of this resource. We had to get some software developed so that it delivered well in an easy-to-navigate format and students could view it from a tablet, a laptop, or from their smartphones. And because we had a young, technically savvy graduate student in charge, it turned out to work Pretty well for us.

Yeah, so it's an interactive multimedia web resource, and when we did the training, actually it was quite easy. We brought them in, we sat them down in front of computers, and now again I'm talking about county agents, and we just basically let them take the various modules within the Journey of a Gene program and then answered questions as we would come to a certain point and where everybody would stop and we would just answer questions. And it was remarkably easy and remarkably effective for our participants. So as a plant pathologist, I'm interested in the fact that you chose soybean disease as the focus of Journey of a Gene. What was, what was sort of the history behind that? How did you end up choosing sudden death syndrome?

Well, the short answer is the research support from USDA NIFA. They wanted to focus on diseases in our major crop plants, and so the research part of that program was supporting discovery that could lead to better breeding for disease resistance or transgenic or genetic engineering approaches. So we wanted to tell the story of the research that was being supported by this project. But another reason why this is a good example is because of the genetics discovery that plant pathologists have been able to make over the last decade As you think about microorganisms that cause disease and how they go about causing disease, the geneticists have identified what those specific genes are that the microbe possesses or the plant possesses that allow them to interact in this very precise way. And if you know that, then you can use a very focused genetic engineering strategy To try to disrupt that pathogenic relationship between the microorganism and the plant. So that discovery was there, and you could then take advantage of that to do a genetic engineering approach. You know, in a lot of ways it's very parallel to how we're making discoveries about diseases in humans. If you understand the very specific genes that are involved in in cancer development, for example, that gives the scientists the clues they need and the strategies that they need to come up with much more precise ways of battling that problem. So in the food production world, I think we're in a position where we could use a lot of this knowledge now with a genetic engineering strategy to overcome some of these devastating diseases that can actually ruin an entire crop and compromise food security.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm curious, I know I've done the— gone through this training, but it's been a while. So remind me, what is— remind our listeners now, what is the trait that is actually used that is being modeled in this? I can't help but being a nerd here and I wanted a reminder, what is the genetic trait that's being inserted into soybeans in this?

All right. Yeah, good question. So sudden death syndrome is caused by a microorganism that lives in the soil. And soybean plants, there are no soybean plants that have been discovered that can use a single gene to help them overcome the invasion of this pathogen. have made is that there are genes from other plants, model plants like Arabidopsis, that aren't hosts for this pathogen. And if you use the genes that they have, they encode proteins that can help the plant, in this case the soybean plant, overcome the disease. And just that single gene transferred to the soybean genome, and that single gene shows promise in overcoming the effects of this disease. So breeders have been working on this trait and continue to work on this trait, but the only way they make success is if they try to follow 10 or 20 genes at a time in their crosses between soybean plants. And that's very difficult work and very difficult to make progress with. Genetic engineering gives you the opportunity to try to use single genes to, in this case, create resistant versions of the soybean plant. And you're transferring the gene from one type of plant to a different type of plant.

So is it an argene or something equivalent which, you know, acts as a receptor for— to recognize invasion, or is it some other—

Yeah, it would be very similar to that mechanism. It's a— the gene would encode a protein.

Okay.

The protein helps the plant recognize that there is a pathogen living with it, and then the gene will trigger a number of responses that the plant's able to mount on its own with the genes that it has. But it has to first of all recognize that this organism isn't a friendly organism. This organism is biologically programmed to cause disease, and I'm the victim if I don't recognize that.

Yeah, that's a great description. I like that. Yeah, I might use that. So who's been using Journey of a Gene? It's clearly useful for county extension agents, but the audience that's using it is wider than that, I'm sure.

Yeah, so we decided to to kind of approach the education end of this and use an audience that we knew was motivated to give Journey of a Gene a try. And that would be the ag science teachers that you find throughout different school districts, both in urban areas but more in rural areas where there is an ag science program within the high school or the middle school. Those faculty have more flexibility in their curriculum. They get to choose what science they're going to teach, and they also have a contest component of their year through what's called FFA. It used to be referred to as Future Farmers of America. Now FFA just kind of stands for— learning more about the application of science and technology in agriculture. And so we actually created a biotechnology contest at Nebraska, and now the same contest is being used in several other states such as Iowa and Missouri. And, and the Journey of a Gene can be used as a way to train your students so that they're ready for this biotechnology contest. And so that's been our initial group of teacher and student users at the high school level. And so we probably have about 4 or 5 states that have been using that now for several years. And now, of course, we're trying to expand to the larger number of biology teachers, and we can see that because we're distributing this on the internet. It's a free resource. We're starting to see teachers identify it as something that they could integrate. It's classroom ready, as you described, and they can integrate it into their science learning programs.

Yeah, it's certainly understandable that ag science teachers would have an interest. I personally have a sort of a passion around getting in front of urban audiences as well to talk about the topic? Because, you know, because there are a lot of people in urban regions of the US that care about our food system, and they're often interested to know more about what genetic engineering actually means. And so do you see opportunities there as well for your program?

Yeah, that's our target, to give To just let teachers who are from an urban environment themselves, don't know that much about agricultural systems, know a lot about the science but don't know how the different science components that they teach are actually put together to create genetically engineered crops. That's kind of a— An understanding that we, we discovered was lacking, not only amongst ag science teachers, but also amongst biology teachers in general. They may not have really learned about how different kinds of basic biology principles are integrated as science transitions to technology to either solve disease problems in in humans, or in this case, disease problems in plants.

Yeah.

And so this kind of puts it all together in more of a curricular approach. You've been teaching your students how gene expression works, how genes encode proteins. Here you can learn how the geneticist can, can take that understanding, make copies of a gene, and actually introduce a copy of the gene that they designed into a living cell and then have a whole organism now contain this new gene, this one new gene, but this gene can control a very important trait.

Yeah, it's really got some good biology built into the program. So with that, we'll take a short break. We're talking to Dr. Don Lee, a professor from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. And when we come back, we'll continue talking about Journey of a Gene and its usefulness in educating educating the public about the nuts and bolts of genetic engineering. Thank you for listening to the Talking Biotech podcast.

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And we're back on the Talking Biotech podcast with Dr. Don Lee from the University of Nebraska, and he's a professor there and very involved in education on genetics, including genetic engineering. So Don, it's again, I've been very impressed with the utility of Journey of a Gene. What is different about Journey of a Gene that can make a difference for science teachers and learners?

Okay, I think the 3 items that make a difference is one we've already referred to, that it's packaged and put together so students could access it from their smartphone. And so a teacher could say, I got a little homework assignment for you. Go to this website and view these videos and take this quiz. So we've, we've kind of taken the power of the smartphone that's in the hands of a lot of students now and taken advantage of that. So packaging it into this learning environment would be one difference. The other difference is that we feature the individual scientists that are making the discoveries and then taking advantage of those discoveries in the process of creating these genetically engineered soybean plants. And so we start with talking about the farmer and the plant pathologist that works with the farmer and the problem that they have when this disease emerges in their fields. We meet the scientist, Madan, who actually has the team that's discovering these genes. We meet Shirley, who's the scientist that actually Uh, does the transformation or the gene introduction into the soybean cells. And then we meet, uh, the plant breeder who is actually taking these plants that have this new transgene and crossing them with varieties that farmers currently grow to make better varieties for farmers to grow down the road. And then we meet a DNA testing expert whose job it is to to very carefully follow the genetic makeup of these plants, make sure that they're selecting plants that, that have the gene and can move the progress of this technology along. So by meeting the scientists, the students get a good idea of where these scientists do their work, who these scientists are, and how they all have to work together before we accomplish the final goal, in this case of having—

A plant.

better types of soybean plants for farmers to grow that, that can withstand this disease.

Yeah, and I've seen sudden death syndrome in the field, and it's, uh, it'll take your breath away, you know, under a severe outbreak. And so, um, see, I, I, and actually I want to affirm this, this idea that you've described of featuring the scientists involved in the work. That, that's Really quite important, I've learned, because, because what, no matter where one stands on genetic engineering and its role in food security and environmental protection, I think it's important that we humanize genetic engineering so that we, people understand that it's just people, you know, and people with a lot of skill and a lot of knowledge, but just people trying to do the best job they can to, you know, make contributions to society. And so I really like that. I wanna—

I think that's real important for, for the young learner as well, because they're trying to envision what they're going to do when they grow up and become a professional. And so this gives them an idea of, if you like science, if you're excited by what you're learning in your science class or when you watch Discovery on TV, there's a lot of potential ways you can make a difference. And I think that's the thing that's really important.

Yeah, and let me editorialize a little bit too on that point. That's a very important point, and I've been very impressed. As I say, I come to genetic engineering as an outsider. I've never transformed a plant. I've never done genetic engineering of any plant, and I am just really impressed with the wealth of opportunities that molecular genetics provides present day for merely for disease control. Even if we don't even think about other applications, we can do so much to improve our crops and to reduce pesticide use with the array of strategies that have been developed for genetic engineering. So I'm excited. Yeah. So What have you learned so far based on student use as well as teacher use of Journey of a Gene?

Good. Yeah, you know, one thing we learned, Paul, I almost hate to admit it as a plant scientist, but one thing the teachers told us is that their students get a little bit more excited about learning biology when you use animal examples compared to plant examples. So part of our our grant process was to make improvements and take what we've learned and make things even better. So we created another version of Journey of a Gene and it's called EnviroPig. And that name sounds a little different, but actually it was a name that was already out there. If you Google EnviroPig, that word, You'll discover that there was a group of researchers that had this idea. They were working at a university in Canada, had this idea that they could genetically improve the pigs so that they excreted less phosphorus in their manure and therefore were producing manure that wouldn't have the the phosphorus pollution potential that, that we currently have in our animal production systems if they could introduce a gene into the pig that encoded an enzyme that helped the animal better digest and utilize the phosphorus that was in the grain. So they took that idea and with funding from pig producers actually were successful in creating transgenic pigs That had much lower phosphorus levels in their manure. And these pigs contained one additional gene that originated from a microorganism that allowed them to start digesting these phosphorus-containing compounds and actually use the phosphorus for their own nutritional needs. And it was very successful scientifically. And so that's the story that we tell in this other alternative. So if you had the Journey of a Gene up and just changed the last part of the address to EnviroPig, you would see this app.

Okay.

And so we're actually using this as well with both high school teachers as well as in my college teaching.

And it works very well, especially when students are a little more interested in animal biology than they are in Yeah, and, and so the, the concept here is that the pig, um, gets a lot more of the phosphorus that's present in the feed, and therefore less goes— much less goes into the water and helping to preserve water quality, basically. Is that, is that a good summary?

That's a good summary. You know, the— and what was interesting for me, at least as a teacher, about this story is, number one, it was all well documented The scientists that did the work published the results of their research in peer-reviewed journals so the whole world could see the science that went into the development of this product. So scientifically, it worked very well, but it was never commercialized. Never commercialized. And you can probably guess the reason why. There were too many opposition groups that rallied against the use of transgenic approaches to change the genetic makeup of a food animal. And the only way for anything to be commercialized, both in Canada and in this country, is that these technologies have to undergo the scrutiny of our regulatory agencies. That's very expensive. expensive to present to the regulatory agencies the data that they want to look at to make sure that these products are safe to grow and safe to eat. And when the opposition looked like it was going to prevent the ability for them to have the regulatory agencies approve this product, they just decided it was— they couldn't— They had to do it. overcome that opposition. And so it was never commercialized, even though it was demonstrated to be a very sound scientific approach to genetically changing the animal so it was more environmentally friendly.

Yeah, yeah, my understanding is there are many, many such projects in the plant world, crop world, that are basically sitting on the shelf too. not commercialized or not being developed. So it'll be an interesting few decades to see where these technologies go.

Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why within the learning environment there's an area called Risks and Benefits. And so if a learner or a teacher has their students click into that, what we decided to do is to describe how food scientists actually test for the safety of a transgenic organism, whether it be a plant or an animal. And so that they can again see the role that scientists play in helping us determine, is this product going to be safe in our hands? Is it safe to eat?

Uh huh.

Could it be encoding an allergen? Could it be somehow Creating a situation where there's a toxin made. And there are very specific testing procedures that food scientists can use, and they do use, and those testing procedures have to be followed before these products meet regulatory approval. So we describe that process. We also describe then, or we just let the folks that are for this technology and the folks that are against this technology have their say as well. We call it a 2-sided argument. We just got permission to use video resources other websites share and have the— and just have it available for students or for learners to look at. And then they can decide, well, what's the nature of the argument? that they're raising either for this technology or against it? Is that a supported argument? Do I agree with it? In the end, everyone's going to make their own decision. As a science teacher, we have the obligation to equip our students to understand the science and to make scientifically based decisions based on the best understanding possible. So we wanted to include that risks and benefits component to Journey of a Gene and EnviroPig because we think that's a real important part of the educational process as well.

Yeah, yeah, very good. And in fact, I must say I don't recall that part, so I'll have to go back and click and make sure I've seen that too. That's a really important approach. Even somebody like myself, I see significant potential to the technology, just like I see significant potential to myself phone. You know, it's technology that I see benefits to, but I also spend really actually more time in my graduate course on genetic engineering, I spend more time on risks, evaluating risks and concerns than on benefits. And so I share your— the ethic that I think almost all public scientists share, and maybe all, that we're also— we also want to be sure what we're doing is safe and we're going to look carefully at all the Credible risks. And so that's great that you put that in. I'll go back and look at that. So what about next projects? Where's your team going next?

So what we're currently working on is a version of this that takes less time to go through for more of the general public user. In addition to learning the science, we're teaming up with social scientists who have looked at what's the nature of the arguments that the opposition groups have, and can we better understand how if we're proponents, you know, we agree with this technology, that we better understand the nature of why they're opposed to it. And, you know, there are times where their opposition has elements of truth to that, and we just need to take that into account as we look at continuing to use this technology in the future. One of the big issues that opposition groups raise is not so much the safety of the technology but how we've used the technology, especially with the use of herbicide resistance in our crop plants. It was used to the point that the weed populations evolved resistance to those herbicides that were being used year after year, and as a result, the technology isn't as effective Now as it was 20 years ago. Not very surprising for a lot of weed scientists that things turned out this way. Kind of human nature, if something works well, you want to keep using it again and again. But we have to learn from our past mistakes. It's really all very similar to the antibiotic use challenge that we have in public health. If we don't use antibiotics in the right way, we can have problems with antibiotic-resistant microbes. We have very similar problems in agriculture if we don't use these technologies in the right way.

Yeah. Well, boy, I do want to second that point you make about involving social scientists in this kind of work. They really have some great insights into how to broach controversial topics with the public. I've seen this both in genetic engineering and I've also done outreach on climate change. And once again, that, in fact, that's where, that is where I learned to appreciate social scientists. And yeah, I affirm your point about, you know, every application of genetic engineering or any technology needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. So some of the problems that we've seen with herbicide tolerance don't necessarily represent the full array of possibilities or concerns with genetic engineering. So yeah, very good points. And then I did want to ask you how you measure success with, you know, these educational resources that you're developing for biotechnology.

Yeah, I think ultimately is Is we want students, we want learners to be able to say, I understand this science better than I did before. You know, I, for example, one of my students I worked with, she was in my genetics class and she was a very environmentally oriented type of learner. And she said, you know, I'm really glad that we spent as much time learning about genetic engineering as we did in this class because now I understand it better. She's a vegetarian, you know, she hasn't changed her habits, but she understands it better. And to me, that's what we need to have, a more educated public and one that isn't afraid of learning science, that sees the fun and the interest in learning science. So the more this resource can be useful in the hands of teachers and their students, then I think we'll start to increase the scientific understanding within those learners. And that's the most important metric.

Yeah. Hear, hear. That's a great conclusion. So yeah, Don, really appreciate your participating in the podcast. And to the listeners, thank you for listening to the Talking Biotech podcast. Follow us on Twitter with the handle @TalkingBiotech. Write a review on iTunes and tell a friend to listen, as your support allows us to deliver more exciting science to more people.

Thank you.

Hi, Paul Vincelli sitting in for Kevin Folta, and thank you for listening. And once again, thank you, Don.

Thank you, Paul.

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