The Nucleotidal Wave

BY FREDERICK KAUFMAN
PHOTOS BY JAMES ORLANDO

Anthers (the part of the stamen that contains the pollen) of muscadine grapes are infused with genes that cause them to glow in the dark. It looks like something created by a farmer who is really into raving, but it’s actually a way of letting the scientists know the gene splice was successful. (Photo courtesy of the Mid-Florida Research and Education Center Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.)
For 50 bucks an hour, the UC Davis Plant Transformation Facility, one of the premier genetic-modification labs in the US, will offer its services to anyone with a dish of DNA, a vegetable, and a mutated dream. It is a place where ordinary supermarket fruits and vegetables are converted into new and improved species and has been home to more than 13,000 “transgenic events,” which is what molecular biologists call it when they blast DNA from one life-form into another. I recently traveled to Yolo County, California, to examine one of the laboratory’s recent successes: molecular pre-seedlings of Thompson seedless grapes that have been spiked with genes from a jellyfish. These grapes are commonly sold as produce and used to make table and box wines, and this infusion fortifies the fruit against a deadly disease. It also makes them glow in the dark.

I walked down the linoleum of Robbins Hall, past the green emergency shower, and stopped in front of Room 192. Behind the door I imagined a coven of menacing scientists with sweaty brows, feverishly trying to graft human limbs onto the trunks of lemon trees. On the bulletin board, someone had scrawled in capital letters, “NOTHING IS REAL.” OK, noted.

I walked in and met the soft-spoken facility manager David Tricoli, who over the course of his career has worked with transgenic cantaloupe, transgenic squash, and transgenic zucchini, not to mention transgenic alfalfa, cherries, lettuce, rice, tobacco, and walnuts. “I’m a big proponent of biotech foods, and a lot of what we do is plant stem-cell research,” Tricoli told me. “It’s a powerful way to improve plants.”

Before Tricoli got into the plant-transformation business, he had studied to become a priest. Given his religious background and training, I figured he might sympathize with the moral concerns and spiritual anxieties some harbor about the quiet stockpiling of a new generation of fruits and vegetables, all of them substantially different from the way nature intended. And isn’t it only natural to fear crops that appear to be normal but are in fact as programmed, designed, and manipulated as a Cheeto, a Twinkie, or an iPod?

As of today, none of the fruits and vegetables that germinate at the UC Davis lab can be sold by an American supermarket or bought by an American consumer. Although the FDA has given some transgenic crops its official “Generally Recognized as Safe” imprimatur, not a single one of Tricoli’s gene-whacked melons or tubers or greens can so much as be munched by a hungry lab assistant—not only because the plants must leave the laboratory before they are mature enough to fruit but also because none of the results of these particular experiments have been approved by the USDA, the agency responsible for the regulation of genetically altered food.

“I understand why people might be afraid of these foods,” Tricoli said. “But if you can pick it up, hold it, feel it, cook it, eat it—the fear goes away. In 20, 30 years, I’m hoping it will be gone.”

This doesn’t mean that the USDA will reject the literal fruits of Tricoli’s labor indefinitely. Many GM foods can be found throughout the food supply, many of which faced years of scrutiny before being approved. GM soybeans and wheat have been a staple of the American diet for the past decade or so. That means this stuff is in everything from tofu to Snickers bars, and you’ve probably been chewing on it for a while now without a clue. A great deal of supermarket papaya has been genetically modified (look for the Rainbow, Sunred, Sunrise, Sunup, and Sunset brands from Hawaii), and the FDA’s list of approved genetically modified fruits and vegetables includes a type of plum, two squashes, 11 tomatoes, three beets, a chicory, a squash, and a zucchini.

Those who would like to buy and sell more produce of this ilk argue that biopharming will help feed the world by creating next-generation drought-resistant crops, flood-resistant crops, insect-resistant crops, herbicide-resistant crops, and crops that can be grown under harsher conditions than traditional varieties can stand, such as less water, colder winters, hotter summers, and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—in other words, GM crops will befit what many see as an inhospitable environmental future.

Still, even if they taste the same, some people might think grapes that are part jellyfish are about as appetizing as a potato with human eyes. So why are people working so hard to merge the DNA of a green grape with that of a squishy evolutional reject? Because something in the jellyfish’s constitution thwarts a pathogen called Pierce’s disease, which has plagued vineyards across the United States for more than a hundred years and cost the grape industry untold millions. Most recently, the disease desiccated vineyards in Southern California and central Texas, and there is particular concern that this epidemic will spread to the Napa Valley (Thompson seedless grapes had the second-highest harvest volume there in 2008). There was no known cure for Pierce’s disease until a consortium of grape growers gave the assignment to Tricoli. He figured out how to inoculate grape embryos against the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa, the active element of the pestilence, which assaults the vascular tissue of grapevines.

In the past, the development of such a disease-resistant grape would have taken farmers and horticulturists decades of domestication and selective breeding: The healthiest vines would be crossbred, grafted, and (if the experimenters were completely satisfied with the results) cloned. Archeobotanists have concluded that it took between 300 and 1,000 years for ancient farmers to perfect corn, and more than 1,000 years to domesticate wheat. We can only speculate how long it took to hone something like the cherry tree, but genetic modification has the potential to maximize growth rates and virtually immunize plants against a variety of diseases. Ultimately, this means farmers will be able to grow more in a variety of climates for less money.


Left: A scientist prepares a leaf for gene bombardment by a biolistic particle delivery system. It’s the plant equivalent of getting held up at gunpoint, except the mugger is a machine that wants to forcefully infuse genes into things instead of a scary teenage purse snatcher. Right: These transgenic tomatoes created by the USDA lab of John Giovannoni contain genes that prevent ripening. Someday this may allow farmers to control the ripening process and grow giant fruits with teeth that will eat all of us and take over the world. Just kidding. However, it will make it easier to grow large amounts of produce.
Infectious diseases are currently spreading at the fastest pace in world history, and growing produce that is resistant to an ever-accelerating variety of lethal plant pathogens is a constant agricultural concern. Diversity is important if produce-splicing scientists wish to have a widespread impact outside the laboratory. This is why a number of grape varieties (Chardonnay, Cabernet, Pinot Meunier, and a Frontenac that bears white fruit instead of red) have been genetically altered in this building.

Those who argue against the genetic modification of fruits and vegetables warn that monstrous agribusinesses like Monsanto and Bayer CropScience will eventually own patents on every ear of corn and bunch of bananas in the world, not to mention the fact that Frankenfood will kill us all dead. Critics also contend that the insect-repelling DNA that scientists like Tricoli have labored to splice into fruit may, once ingested, adhere to the lining of your intestines and become an eternally self-replicating, poison-producing mutant gene that will do something terrible like spread to your reproductive system and make your kids dribble out of the womb looking like that guy who gets melted by toxic waste in RoboCop. They argue that the gene-transfer experiments occurring at places like the UC Davis Plant Transformation Laboratory are uncontrolled, and that molecular biologists such as Tricoli have no way to know the effects of adding, subtracting, and scrambling the genes of the crudités platter.

Opponents view these subtle hybrids as forbidden fruit, but few have visited the microfields where they are grown. These experimental yields are few in number and not available for tests. The next best thing was to meet a white-coated farmer to see how he tended his crop.


It was warm inside Tricoli’s laboratory and extraordinarily clean. A sterile atmosphere bolsters the integrity of data, and everywhere I looked I saw dozens of budding experiments, each leafy freak of nature shooting forth from a shallow layer of antiseptic growth media called agar, a gel that comes in pink, orange, blue, and black. Nowhere did I see a streak of mud or speck of soil, and it occurred to me that within the heady, HEPA-filtered atmosphere of the UC Davis Plant Transformation Facility I was catching a glimpse of the geeky foot soldiers who would fight and win the next green revolution.

Thick ropes of electric cord snaked from the ceiling to three ten-foot-tall metal growth chambers—high-tech greenhouses that might be mistaken for walk-in freezers if it weren’t for the red biohazard stickers affixed to their double doors. Within these shining nurseries, thousands of tender plantlets bathed beneath pink and blue fluorescent lights, the childlike colors matching the endless, artificial spring. The tiniest transformants sprang from scores of round plastic petri dishes, each translucent root sucking up its own custom blend of nutrients and assigned a unique code: AT07130, IGFW-2, V6026A. Tricoli pointed out the mini-plots of transgenic peppers (both green and hot), transgenic tomatoes, transgenic potatoes, and a wide variety of transgenic lemons and limes. He is a modest man who works for a long list of clients, but their orders don’t seem to impede his ethics. “We went into crop science not to make a lot of money,” he said. “Insect-resistant vegetables? What a great thing! Who wouldn’t want that? And then we succeed—and nobody wants it.” He is genuinely perplexed at the cynical reactions to his work.

I poked the touch-screen computer built into the wall of one of the growth chambers, and it immediately displayed a temperature graph. I wondered if changing some of the growth variables—relative humidity, leaf temperature, oxygen level—might help along the process. But when I pressed the next button, the computer demanded my access code, at which point Tricoli explained that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, off-site technicians monitor the health and well-being of his transgenic plants. Within the growth chamber, the genetically modified crops were under constant surveillance.

“Plants don’t rest,” said Tricoli. “They don’t sleep. They’re always growing. Here, I think they have everything they need. All the sugar, all the carbon sources, all the nutrients. They are pampered, that’s for sure.”

After the plants have developed inside Tricoli’s chambers, they will be moved across campus to be repotted at the UC Davis Controlled Environment Facility, where there are so many genetically transformed fruits and vegetables and grains and nuts that the aquamarine metal greenhouses take up an entire floor of a warehouse-size building. Soon, the transformants will be strong enough to be double-wrapped and FedExed to their rightful owners, and Tricoli will catch his last glimpse of the fruits and vegetables he brought into the world. The plants’ final destinations are universities and research facilities across the globe, where they will undergo more testing and more grow-out and engender more reams of paperwork. The hope is that, one day, a cloned specimen will grow in its natural habitat rather than under the auspices of a controlled environment.


The transgenic broccoli plant on the left has been infused with something called Bt protein, which makes it taste like crap to insects. It’s why the specimen is untouched while the one on the right was thoroughly munched even though they were both grown at the same location. This could lead to the end of pesticides. The golden apples contain an inhibitor of the enzyme that normally makes them bruise after sitting on the shelf too long.
I asked Tricoli if he could show me how he created a transgenic fruit or vegetable, so he led me through the laboratory’s myriad collection of spinners and shakers, vortexers and transilluminators, thermal cyclers and spectrophotometers, until we came to the strangest device I had seen that day: a DNA gun, otherwise known as a Model PDS-1000 Helium Biolistic Particle Delivery System. He was going to show me how to shoot DNA into a plant cell.

The biolistic gun did not look like scientific equipment so much as it did a weird pressure cooker. Tricoli screwed together the bombardment chamber and then began to piece together something called the microcarrier launch assembly. “It sounds like Cape Canaveral,” he said before retrieving a plastic vial of bullets, each of which had been sheathed in experimental genes. “We used to use tungsten beads,” he explained, “but we found out it was a little toxic. So now we use gold.”

The gun reminded me of a cross between a 1950s gas pump and a mini fridge, and each golden bullet measured one micron in diameter—the ammunition tinier than a fleck of dust. A century and a half after the forty-niners rushed to Sutter’s Mill and Eureka, the buried treasure of Northern California was helping to ensure Napa Valley’s importance to people who like to get drunk.

“The first machines actually used a .22-caliber gun cartridge,” Tricoli said. Then he set some sample plant cells in the target area, closed the Plexiglas door of his gene machine, and flipped a switch. First came a slow sucking sound, then the steady rise of a pressure gauge. I steeled myself for the mighty blast of the bio-musket but was instead treated to a paltry ping! as the DNA-slathered dust motes popped the cherry of a virgin double helix.

There is another way to infuse plant cells with foreign DNA, less primitive than genetic firearms if no less violent. In the “agrobacterium” method, genes are pushed from one species to the next by creating a cancerous tumor within the target species, a malignant growth that will contain the genetic material biologists wish to attach. Unlike the Gunsmoke vibe of the biolistic method, agrobacterium plays out like a show on the Food Network: First you slice up a few baby leaves of the target plant, then you dunk the leaves into a beaker of bacteria. As the shredded plant leaves soak, the DNA-spiked bouillabaisse will insinuate itself into the wounded cells and instigate a controlled infection in the target plant, an infection that will create a custom-made tumor. Through this tumor, the bacteria’s DNA will advance into the nucleus of the target cells—and ever after become a part of a new plant’s genetic blueprint. The agrobacterium method is more precise than biolistics, and all you have to do is let the malignancy grow.

Done with his demonstrations and explanations, Tricoli got to work. He sucked some red antibiotic into one of his disposable pipettes, deposited the dose into a beaker of bacteria broth, and began to tabulate data points, frequencies, pretreatments, and hormones.

“People hear a lot of negative things about genetically modified products,” he said. “But for them to go in and educate themselves enough to make an informed decision—that would take a lot of time.”


Indeed, biotechnology has many foes, all of them happy to assert that next-generation groceries pose a threat to public health as grave as tobacco, asbestos, and DDT. Instead of a wondrous world of nutritional and marketing potential, the critics see a molecular money grab that will lead to an inescapable spiral of genetic pollution.

“Have you ever thought why these transgenic experiments are called ‘events’?” asked William Freese, the science-policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety who back in 2001 played a key role in the discovery of unapproved GM corn in the food supply and has remained one of the most ardent critics of biopharming. “What is an event? It’s not repeatable. If you do a well-controlled experiment, you should be able to repeat it. But what they’re doing is taking the fruits of this and introducing it to the food supply. When you naturally breed plants, you’re depending on a process that’s been honed by millennia of evolution. Genetic engineering is only 20 or 30 years old, and the way in which the sexual boundary is being crossed is extremely problematic. It’s a radical departure in the history of crop breeding.”

According to Dr. Neil Carman, a member of the Sierra Club’s Committee on Genetic Engineering, GM papaya contains a number of seemingly superfluous DNA sequences that had not been reported to the USDA before the federal agency approved their sale. Will the side effects of these unreported DNA sequences leave future generations of humans with rind for skin and leafy vegetation budding out their orifices? Probably not, but nobody knows for sure because no experiments have been conducted.

Carman asserted that gene transfers from one species to the next almost always result in the creation of strange new fusion proteins: never-before seen biomolecules and bioactive substances, including hosts of DNA mutations, deletions, disruptions, rearrangements, scramblings, fragmentations, translocations, and redundancies—any of which may spark unforeseen biocontaminations. Reports have critiqued the scientific precision of the biolistic gene gun and asserted that the randomness and violence of the insertion method may alter the expression of not only a single plant gene but even one out of every 20 genes throughout the entire organism. As a result, fruit and vegetable proteins could lose their function, or not express themselves in quite the same way they did before, or be utterly silenced. Although their tastes and appearances may appear unchanged, they might house any number of hidden corruptions.


These transgenic potatoes were engineered by USDA scientist Li Li to contain carotenoids, which are good for vision and keep your skin from turning into alligator leather. It’s also why their insides are orange.
“Scientists don’t know what they’re doing,” Freese said. “And it’s not just the Whole Foods of the world that are not interested. You’ve also seen market rejection from major companies, like Frito-Lay, which is not sourcing genetically engineered corn for its chips.”

On the other hand, Dr. Kim Hummer, a berry specialist and research leader at the USDA’s Corvallis, Oregon, Agricultural Research Station, said most people do not realize that their own bodies are composed of DNA from a striking variety of different sources. “We’re not separate, or better,” said Hummer. “The same genes reside in animals and plants. We’re composed of the same units. Moving them around is what humans are assigned to do. That’s what we’ve been doing since we started agriculture.”

Hummer is far from alone in her views. “If one believes in evolution, we all came from the same organism,” noted Dennis J. Gray, a developmental biologist at the Mid-Florida Research and Education Center, where scientists have been bioengineering grapes for the past quarter century. “That’s why an oyster—which came from the same organism that we did—has a lot of the same genes we have,” added Gray. There are fish genes in bananas, just as there are banana genes in human beings, and to deny the fact would be nothing less than biological chauvinism. Why, then, are so many afraid of foreign DNA?

“The difference is that in the traditional ways of crossing plants, we are stuck by the sexual barrier,” said Jules Janick, a professor of horticulture at Purdue University. “We can’t mate with a cabbage, but now we can take a cabbage gene and put it into humans, or a human gene into a cabbage. We’ve been moving DNA around for 10,000 years within limits circumscribed by the natural constraints of sex. The taboo against bestiality has unconsciously entered into our fear of the wide crosses that are now possible.”

Back at UC Davis, Tricoli handed over a sundae cup in the middle of which dozens of minuscule buds had sprouted. These were the plants I had come to California to see, the grapes interfused with jellyfish. I peered at the miniature tangle of vines and the clear snap top beaded with condensation. A knot of white roots had massed above the purple-black growth medium, and tiny green shoots pressed against the plastic cover, as though they could hardly wait to get out. Tricoli took a pair of forceps, plucked one of the largest grape leaves, and brought me over to a Zeiss microscope he had hooked up to a profoundly complicated mix of gadgets, black boxes, and a Nikon digital camera.

As Tricoli set up the microscope, he told me that he had grown up in a household of six brothers and sisters and that he could remember how precious food had been in his own home. “We ate,” Tricoli recalled, “but we didn’t eat well. Spaghetti two, three times a week. Homemade sauce.” Tricoli’s father, a factory worker for Western Electric, had eased the family food bill with backyard gardening. “I remember him germinating tomatoes and eggplants and peppers in the basement under little artificial lights,” he said.

Just then, Tricoli hit a switch and the lights went out. Outside the building, rain had begun to pound and the din of thunder and an endless stream of mechanized buzzes, hums, and clicks made the shadowed lab seem more bizarre than ever. Tricoli turned another knob, and his Zeiss sent a beam of ultraviolet radiation through the darkness. Then he invited me to take a look.

I peered through the twin eyepieces, and as my eyes adjusted I perceived the outlines of what appeared to be a tiny constellation of stars. The sparkling points, explained Tricoli, were microscopic gene-transfer markers made of bioluminescent jellyfish DNA, which indicated that a change had occurred within the grape plant cells. A proto-vine of Thompson seedless über-grapes was glowing in the dark, and as I watched the glistening blue-white beads, etched in black light, the notion crossed my mind that some disgruntled lab janitor had smeared liquid LSD across the oculars.

Eventually, Tricoli explained, the plant would bear fruit. And with a little luck, a lot of work, and governmental approval, a sequence of nucleotides from one of the grossest and most annoying creatures in the world will help ensure that a little drought will never get in the way of a wino and his bag-in-a-box.

Fred’s recent book about America’s extreme relationship with food, A Short History of the American Stomach, is out now. Special thanks to Maureen Hanson, professor of molecular biology and genetics at Cornell University, and Dennis J. Gray, professor and developmental biologist at the Mid-Florida Research and Education Center Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida.