News & Blogs

TC Group lance aujourd’hui Terminator -La suite, un communiqué sur une nouvelle recherche en rapport avec les semences-suicide et autres technologies relatives aux semences GM (génétiquement modifiées) qui constituent une menace inacceptable pour les agriculteurs, la biodiversité et la souveraineté alimentaire.

ETC Group nous parle aujourd’hui d’une nouvelle cuvée de technologies du génie génétique, présentées comme une solution biosécuritaire à la dissémination non désirée des transgènes de cultures, arbres et plantes pharmaceutiques GM. En pratique, la commercialisation de ces technologies permettra aux multinationales des semences d’affermir leur emprise sur les semences exclusives et de gruger les droits des agriculteurs.

Synthia, the (theoretical) human-made synthetic microbe – still barely a twinkle in J. Craig Venter’s eye – may be in search of a surrogate micro-mom sometime very soon. According to a research report released today in Science magazine, Synthia (the subject of a patent application discovered by ETC Group a few weeks ago -see “Goodbye Dolly -- Hello Synthia!”) may have overcome her last hurdle. The report, authored by Craig Venter and his colleagues at Synthetic Genomics Inc., claims to have inserted a foreign bacterial genome into the cell of another bacterial species. Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith who is one of Venter’s co-authors in the research article told a meeting of synthetic biologists in Zürich on Monday that this represents a significant step en route to building a whole new life form. As the article itself concludes, “…we have discovered a form of bacterial DNA transfer that permits … recipient cells to be platforms for the production of new species using modified natural genomes or manmade genomes…”