Brief introduction of golden rice

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 250,000 to 500,000 children are blind every year due to vitamin A deficiency, and some of them will lose their lives. Most of them live in developing countries. Vegetables such as carrots and tomatoes, as well as meat, butter and milk are all foods rich in vitamins and their synthetic materials. These foods rich in vitamins can often be seen on the daily dining tables of ordinary people in cities, but it is not yet possible to put these nutritious foods on the dining tables of underdeveloped countries and remote rural areas in China. According to the domestic survey in 2000, the vitamin A deficiency rate of children aged 0-5 is still as high as 1 1%, and most of them are concentrated in rural and remote areas. Even in developed countries, there are children like crayon Shinchan who don't like carrots. They are likely to lack vitamin A. Scientists pin their hopes on "golden rice" to save these poor children. Three years ago, this hope came true. German old man Patrocx can be regarded as the father of "golden rice". He is seventy-five this year. Eight years ago, against the shiny green rice stalks, his head appeared on the cover of Time magazine in the United States with the title "This kind of rice can save one million children a year". The first generation of "golden rice" graduated from his laboratory in Zurich Institute of Technology. This origin needs to start from 1984. At an international agricultural conference in the Philippines, Gary Tonison, the agricultural director of Rockefeller Genetic Society, who was in charge of a large amount of money, asked the agricultural breeding experts present: "You guys, don't be busy blowing, can you make me a cow B rice?" "Well said, let it turn yellow." Someone answered. Yes, it is to turn it yellow and turn it into the same color as carrots. A joke played by scientists came true 20 years later. Of course, this is not easy. In ordinary rice, the content of vitamin A or carotene is zero, so it is impossible to make rice rich in vitamins through natural hybridization. Because hybridization requires a female parent to have the traits we need, however, until now, agronomists have not found any rice containing vitamin A or carotene as a breeding female parent. It's like there are only blacks and whites in this world, and no matter how mixed-race, there will be no yellow race; Similarly, although we also have purple rice and white rice now, "golden rice" can't be obtained by their hybridization. Next, Gary Tonison invested a lot of money in the pioneering research of "golden rice", but after nearly ten years of research, "golden rice" seems to be just a pie drawn by researchers to obtain funds for philanthropists.

At this time, Patrick and Bell appeared. One of them was a breeder and the other was a molecular biologist. The two brothers met in a very high and ethereal place and worked out a very high and ethereal idea together. This is on the plane to new york, and they fantasize that maybe the whole carotene production line can be introduced into rice of other species. The idea was so "crazy" at that time that neither they themselves nor the fund-raising foundation thought it was impossible, but it was worth a try.

Let's think of plants as "factories" This "factory" obtains raw materials and energy from soil, air and sunlight, and produces various products such as protein, sugar, fat and vitamins that are useful to itself and human beings. We fill our stomachs with goods from the warehouse of the plant factory. For rice, this "warehouse" is its seed. Now we want to extract carotene from this "warehouse", but the warehouse manager of rice told us, "Sorry, we don't have a carotene production line, so there is no carotene in the warehouse." then what These two old humans, Patrox and Bell, suggested that we introduce a production line to you from other places. Obviously, plants will not easily agree that this is a "whimsical" idea of human beings and a "humiliating" idea of plants. Every factory has a strict "closed door" policy, not that its own things cannot be imported. Scientists who are "ambitious" about plants can only "force" plants to introduce genes from another species by secretly using viruses (you can understand them as spies) or blatantly using violent means (you can understand them as pressure by force). Even so, the success rate is frustratingly low, let alone introducing a series of genes. Let's see what this "production line" will look like:

The dotted line represents the synthetic route of carotene in plants. This production line needs six "skilled workers", all of whom have a smelly and long foreign name. According to the order in the production line, they are called IPP/DMAPP isomerase, GGPP synthase, phytoene synthase, phytoene dehydrogenase, truncated carotene dehydrogenase and lycopene α β cyclase. Rice itself "hired" the first two "skilled workers"; The remaining four are what scientists want to "sneak in". Two of them, phytoene dehydrogenase and truncated carotene dehydrogenase, can be replaced by a "versatile technical worker" bacterial carotene dehydrogenase. Because the fewer people who "smuggle", the greater the possibility of success, and scientists have to choose this "all-round skilled worker" from bacteria. Introduce these selected "special technicians". Phytoene synthase and lycopene α β cyclase from daffodil have the function of regulating flower color; Bacterial carrot dehydrogenase comes from soil bacterium Erwinia, which can mainly convert phytoene into lycopene. Even though scientists have figured out the composition of this production line, it took eight years from 1992 to the full introduction in 2000 to increase the carotene content in rice from zero to a little more than one kilogram 1 mg. The generation of "golden rice" was born.

While researchers are cultivating new rice varieties in boring laboratories, another group of people are working tirelessly. They are almost natural enemies of geneticists. Their aim is to oppose genetically modified crops, among which the loudest voice is called "Greenpeace". In Greenpeace's view, it is a good thing to solve the problem of malnutrition in poor areas, but it is not a good idea to use genetically modified crops. After all, the root causes of malnutrition are poverty and food shortage. The "golden rice" under the banner of benefiting developing countries may just be a "curve saving the country" strategy of international seed companies, paving the way for the large-scale use of other genetically modified crops in the future. Moreover, it is more like a joke to solve people's vitamin A deficiency with "golden rice". Because according to the carotene content of the "golden rice" generation, a baby needs to eat three kilograms of rice a day to meet its demand for vitamin A! There is probably no such "little big stomach king" in the world. In Greenpeace's European base camp, Petraeus and Bell's research on rice was severely warned by these radical environmental protection organizations, so that Zurich Institute of Technology had to establish an "armed protection" cultivation greenhouse to protect Petraeus' plants.

The carotene content of "golden rice" generation is so low that people doubt its future role in agricultural production. But Patricks thinks that the first generation is only a conceptual product, just like the Wright brothers flying into the blue sky with simple equipment for the first time, which represents the hope of mankind. The generation of "golden rice" who graduated from Zurich Institute of Technology did not intend to start working directly, but was taken by Syngenta Agricultural Company and resumed "professional education" (scientists seem to hate the intervention of commercial companies, and Petrox also expressed similar views, but he was also helpless). Drake, the new manager of golden rice, called a group of researchers to re-evaluate the whole production line, and found that phytoene synthase from daffodils did not play a role, which was the "bottleneck" of insufficient carotene production. That's why it's "on fire". Drake started a new round of "personnel selection", and the phytoene synthase from corn (information, market) performed best and successfully won this position. After five years of cultivation, the second generation of "golden rice", which rebuilt the "carotene production line", appeared. Compared with the first generation five years ago, its carotene content has increased by 23 times, and the highest carotene content can reach 37 mg per kilogram of rice. This is a breakthrough with full utilization value. Children can meet half of their vitamin A needs by eating more than 70 grams a day.

Now, the second generation of "Golden Rice" intends to "graduate and find a job". The first problem it encountered was not from its rival Greenpeace, but related patents owned by other agricultural companies. The second generation of "golden rice" always involves twelve patented technologies. As long as some of them are not solved, you will not get the Employment Permit. In order to solve this problem, scientists, agricultural companies and charitable foundations jointly established "GoldenRiceHumanitarianBoard". Syngenta, which is responsible for cultivating the second generation of golden rice, donated the invention right of the second generation of golden rice. Under the mediation of Syngenta Duboko, all the patentees involved in "golden rice" announced that they would give up their patents. The provisions on humanized use of "golden rice" include the following contents:

1. For the use of developing countries, which are defined by FAO as low-income countries with insufficient food, and China is among them;

Two, for the use of poor middle peasants, poor middle peasants refer to farmers whose annual land income is less than 1 10,000 dollars;

Third, this technology can be used on the seeds or endosperm of other crops as needed, but the plants using this technology must be widely used agricultural varieties;

Four, seed sales should not charge the extra cost of this technology, that is, to maintain the same sales price as ordinary seeds;

Five, with the permission of the poor and middle peasants, can be sold by the state to meet the needs of the city;

Six, farmers can breed the next generation of seeds, that is, farmers have the ownership of seeds.

This is a great agreement. Under the protection of this multi-party consultation humanitarian regulation, "golden rice" seems to have a bright future. As the "second graduate" of "Genetically Modified Crops Research Institute", it is not controlled by profit-making international agricultural seed companies like its predecessors-the "first graduate" represented by BT insect-resistant cotton and BT insect-resistant soybean. Moreover, the first batch of "graduated" transgenic crops are good at surviving in adversity and are not easily infected or destroyed by germs or pests, so they are considered to have potential strong ecological hazards. In the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India and China, these transgenic crops have been widely planted. Once neglected in management, if their "special effects genes" are not carefully transferred to other similar wild species, these wild plants may be turned into "super plants" with insect resistance, disease resistance and stress resistance, forming significant survival advantages in nature, thus destroying the balance of the ecosystem. Of course, this potential ecological hazard is much more obvious in "golden rice", because "the first-stage graduates of genetically modified crops" have strong natural viability, and "golden rice" serves human beings, making them gain stronger physique without affecting the functions of other wild creatures, and has no relative survival advantage in the wild environment.

However, this is also the trouble. As the first genetically modified crop that needs to be eaten directly as a whole, people are not at ease about its safety. In the past, "transgenic crops", foreign substances produced by specific genes were not enriched in the parts that they would be used or eaten by human beings (such as transgenic cotton (information, market) and soybeans). Radical environmental protection organizations strongly oppose "golden rice" as unnecessary and may affect human health. Governments in developing countries are also deeply skeptical about the use of this technology. The imperialist powers call opium a "competitive fairy", and it is not unheard of that opium is only exported but not sold domestically. On the one hand, this "insecurity" comes from incomplete trust in science, even though "golden rice" has been fully studied in environment, biological safety and human health; On the other hand, any country is deeply wary of the "free charity" of other countries, especially the capitalist countries with "criminal record", so they are unwilling to let these technologies be used casually on the basis of one country-agriculture. This made James Daley of the University of Queensland pay attention to the "local manufacturing" of genetically modified crops, instead of being completely replaced by researchers from developed countries. He presided over a project to construct transgenic bananas rich in vitamins A, E and iron. The main co-researchers of this project are all in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, a strange country for us, where people eat bananas as their daily staple food. This future "transgenic banana" will be produced by Ugandan scholars and applied to agricultural production in Uganda. Scientists hope that through such means, the local approval of genetically modified crops can be accelerated and the malnutrition of local people can be improved.

At present, a multi-party research network of "Golden Rice" has been formed, covering developing and developed countries such as the Philippines, India, Viet Nam, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia and Germany.