New Brunswick, New Jersey
August 30, 2003

By Patricia Alex, The Associated Press via Checkbiotech.org

Rong Di is determined to build a better tomato. "I'm not giving up," she says as she examines sprouts germinating in a closet-sized greenhouse.

Di has cloned an estrogen gene found in soybeans and introduced it into these tiny plants in the hope of creating healthier tomatoes and potatoes. Her work, and that of others at Rutgers University's Biotechnology Center for Agriculture and the Environment, is cutting edge in the field of genetically engineered agriculture -- a topic that has become a political hot potato in some circles.

The Biotech Center -- begun at Rutgers' Cook College in the 1980s -- focuses on research into plants, microbes, and, to a lesser extent, animals. Its scientists have developed microbes that gobble oil spills, turfgrass that rebuffs weeds, and plants whose roots can extract heavy metals from soil.

The Biotech Center is in the 150,400-square-foot Foran Hall at the heart of Cook's bucolic campus, where sheep still graze off busy Route 1. It sits behind the Nabisco Center for Advanced Food Technology, where researchers, often funded by industry, work on such projects as extending the shelf life of rations or making microwave cakes rise.

This is the agricultural university of the 21st century. The Biotech Center scientists teach in more than 30 graduate and undergraduate courses at Cook and supervise research projects for more than 120 students annually.

While it is publicly funded, the Biotech Center exists on a combination of industry and government research grants. Fifteen patents have been awarded for its research, and another 16 are pending.

"We try to do the basic research, with an applied twist, and then get it out into the world," said Gerben Zylstra, director of the center.

For the most part, the researchers at the center are unabashed about the collaboration with industry, saying that their work produces jobs and scientific advances.

The center, for instance, is in the middle of a five-year, $5 million grant for research that uses plants as chemical factories to produce nutritional supplements. The research is funded by some government grants, but a private company, Phytomedics Inc., funds other studies and pays the salaries of the researchers.

The private company is a spinoff of Rutgers and was founded by researcher Ilya Raskin. Rutgers holds the patents from any developments, which are then licensed to the private firm to develop and market.

The lab for botanical pharmaceuticals is the largest at the university -- 20 people from 15 countries work there, and it has an inventory of 8,000 roots. Researchers travel the globe for specimens. The aim: standard and consistent supplements.

"It's an effort to bring higher quality to the market," said David Ribnicky, one of the directors of the lab. "We've analyzed stuff off the shelf, and sometimes it has nothing in it."

The lab's primary project is the development of a botanical to treat diabetes. Clinical trials on the extract, a relative of tarragon, are under way.

So-called nutraceuticals have many advantages, chief among them the way they are produced, Ribnicky said.

"We can set up a hydroponic greenhouse as opposed to a big chemical factory."

Other research is seemingly more esoteric. With federal funding, Tom Leustek has worked in his lab since 1996 on isolating amino acids in plants.

"So far my work hasn't found any application, but it takes a long time," said Leustek, who is competing with researchers in Europe in looking for a breakthrough.

Because amino acids are critical in determining the nutritional value of plants, his work may help enhance plants' nutritional values through genetic engineering.

Genetically modified (GM) foods have, for the most part, remained below the radar in the United States. They were quietly integrated into the food supply over the past 15 years. But the issue has caused widespread objections over health and culture in Europe as the Bush administration pressures the rest of the world to accept such crops.

In Europe, genetically engineered foods raise the specter of American industrial hegemony and laboratory creations run amok. And this year, the pejorative for the process, "Frankenfood," got a listing in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

While the pace of research continues unabated at the Biotech Center, students there do consider the cultural and ethical fallout of their work.

"GM sounds like an additive or tampering, whereas we think of it more as breeding," said Michael Lawton, a scientist at the Biotech Center who teaches a class on the ethics of the issue. "We lament that people aren't acting logically, but people often don't act logically."

Lawton said much of the opposition to biotech is based on romantic notions of small-scale family farming when, in fact, industrial agriculture is already the norm in America. Further, Bush administration officials and others say biotech could be the answer to the problems of world hunger.

Rutgers this month joined a group of state agricultural universities and research foundations launching a project to provide high-yield, genetically engineered crops to countries that are too poor to pay the biotech licensing fees often charged by big corporations. Scientists at the Biotech Center see their work as the next step in agricultural progress.

"We're speeding up natural processes and doing it more precisely," said Zylstra, the center's director.

Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press