Those who fret about overfishing and those who fret about genetically modified (GM) food are often one and the same. Such people will soon be impaled on the horns of a dilemma if Johnathan Napier of Rothamsted Research, an agricultural establishment in southern England, has his way. As he and his colleagues described last week in Metabolic Engineering Communications, they are working on technology that could reduce demand for wild-caught fish considerably. It will do so, though, by feeding farmed fish with GM chow.
Fish do not actually make fish oils. They get them from their food. Although it would be perfectly possible to feed farmed fish such as salmon on food grown on land, in practice they get healthy helpings of wild-caught species such as capelin and anchovies (pictured) that are not in great demand as human food, in order to boost their DHA and EPA levels. About 10% of what is pulled out of the ocean by fishing boats ends up this way.
Dr Napier’s idea was to take an oil-generating plant (he chose Camelina sativa, a cousin of rape), add a few pertinent genes from creatures that make DHA and EPA naturally, and see what happened. Using several genes, he put together as a single DNA package and delivered by a messenger called Rhizobium radiobacter, a bacterium that is able to inject bits of its DNA into plant cells.
Tests in greenhouses went well, so last year the researchers planted some modified Camelina outdoors. Yields of DHA and EPA from these field crops were as good as those from the greenhouses.
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