Re: Who started Transgenic Organisms?

Hi Michael,

By ‘transgenic’ one means an organism in which a gene has been changed or added from another organism. More generally, one could argue that crops created 8,000 years ago from common grasses were the first “modified” organisms. My favourite example of what can be done by regular breeding is all the variants of Brassica oleracea: cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cauliflower all come from the same wild plant. Another classical example is that for instance both the Chihuahua and the Blood Hound stem from tamed wolves. A more recent creation from regular breeding is the Belgian Blue cow, which is often mistakenly branded as a monster of genetic engineering. But I suspect that your interest lies with the first notion.

Science got around understanding the notion of genes – although they were not called that at the time - after 1865 when Mendel did his now famous experiments with peas, but it took until shortly after 1900 for the notion to spread. Then for several decades scientists studied genes but it was first in 1944 that it was made clear that it was DNA that carried the genetic information. It was still to take many years before one had developed the tools to knowingly transfer genes from one organism to another. By saying this I’d like to exclude the genetic mutation of organisms by for instance X-ray irradiation, because this is just a more techie way of performing the feat of the first farmers 8,000 years ago. In 1926 Herman Muller made a lot of fruit fly mutants in this way. In 1935 Beadle and Ephrussi transferred cells from one strain of fruit flies to another. This would not qualify either, as no genes were introduced in a cell: they mixed whole cells. And besides, they were all fruit fly cells.

In 1946 Max Delbruck showed that genes from two different viruses could be combined to form a new kind of virus: this is called recombination, and with this we are approaching our first “transgenic”. We will have to wait until 1972 for Paul Berg to knowingly join two DNA strands from different sources into one plasmid (circular DNA). This was the first so-called recombinant DNA, which is the basis of the transgenics we are seeking. As it was not re-introduced into an organism, it does not qualify as our “first”.

The year after however, in 1973, Herbert Boyer combined a gene from a bacterium with a gene from a virus and got a recombinant DNA that was then introduced into a bacterium called E. coli. Bingo! Here we have a true transgenic organism. It might not be as glorious (or infamous, some would say) as what was performed later, like putting fish genes in poplars, but this is definitely the first. Boyer will later found the company Genentech which in 1977 will have bacteria that produce a human protein by recombinant DNA technology. The revolution has begun. The next year Genentech produced insulin, thus bringing hope to the millions of diabetes patients who previously had to rely on expensive and potentially dangerous insulin purified from human blood plasma.

Using retroviruses, transgenic mice were produced in 1974. The first true transgenic plants were produced in 1983. Three research groups at the same conference presented results of plants with bacterial genes conferring antibiotic resistance.

So you see, true transgenics is a rather new invention and the first instance was a small bacterium, but a bacterium that has meant a world of difference to mankind.