This Taste of Tech post is the fourth in a series exploring the science and technology of food in partnership with Gearfuse. Don’t miss last week’s post on the complicated relationship between industrial production lines and pure food by Matthew Battles.
Nicola Twilley
Gear Fuse
Earlier this week, Popular Science published a step-by-step guide to building genetically modified seeds. The six stage process they outline, from finding a new trait to the genes expressing themselves, takes at least a decade—and doesn’t even include gaining regulatory approval. The mechanical processes of genetic engineering, shorn of any debate over ethics, safety, or intellectual property, are a curious blend of painstaking grunt-work and technological ingenuity.
For example, take a look at step two: grabbing genes from a seed. In the past, this was a lengthy and time-consuming process that involved: “planting the seed, growing the plants to a certain size, and then clipping a paper-hole-puncher through a leaf to gather a sample.”
To get around this, Monsanto engineers invented a special chipping device that shaves off just a tiny piece of the seed and grinds it into a powder that can be analyzed with genome-mapping technology. A blast of air separates the shavings from the rest of the seed; a bar code system ensures the two can be reconciled later. The device, about the size of a home air conditioner, can chip a seed every second.
It was easy to design a chipper for soybeans, because the seeds are shaped such that they always fall a certain way. But corn kernels are all different, and you don’t want to shave off the wrong part and kill the embryo. Monsanto’s corn chipper uses cameras and object-recognition algorithms to determine how each seed should be aligned for proper chipping. Next-generation chippers for melons and other fruits have a camera that takes 100,000 frames per second—all to help geneticists find new traits even faster.
The rest of the how-to guide covers gene guns, Trojan Horse bacteria, and “an automatic germination system, which sucks up individual seeds, plants them, blows dirt from their roots to check their health, and automatically supplies nutrients the plant needs to grow.” It’s fascinating, but by the time you reach step six, you might well conclude that genetic engineering is an incredibly complex, expensive, and high-tech process.
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