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IDEAL PRION VEHICLE. "Given the reported presence of exosomes in biological fluids as well as the lipid and nucleic acid contents of exosomes, these vesicles represent an ideal mechanism for encapsulating prions and potential cofactors to facilitate prion transmission." http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2016/01/14/jbc.M115.684258.short View in LinkedIn

ANTIBIOTIC CONSTRUCT IN GMOs. "Researchers have expended much energy and resources into developing alternative transgenic plant production schemes such as herbicide tolerance, positive selection, and marker-free selection. All these alternatives have prominent drawbacks. After all, approximately 70% of all transgenic plants have been produced using the neomycin phosphotransferase II (nptII) gene from Escherichia coli for good reason: it works, especially in most dicot species." http://www.isb.vt.edu/articles/oct0501.htm View in LinkedIn

INSERTS OF ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE GENES as markers in GMO constructs. What was convenient in the lab has turned into a potential disaster in the field. A clear case of not thinking it through carefully enough both from a science and a regulatory perspective. View in LinkedIn

GENE INSERTS. "A major problem with many types of vectors, and hence also GMOs, is that they contain genes that confer resistance to antibiotics, herbicides, insecticides and other cytotoxic products, and these can be spread in the environment and create ecological problems." https://lnkd.in/eJ8cwgX View in LinkedIn

ANTIBIOTIC GENE JUMPING. "The movement of a transgene from plant to microbe could pose a significant risk, especially if an antibiotic resistance gene, originally from a bacterium, could be transferred to a pathogenic bacterium, causing new antibiotic resistance problems for human health." http://www.isb.vt.edu/articles/oct0501.htm View in LinkedIn

IN ONLY 71 YEARS, we have so misused a lifesaving class of antibiotic molecules that they are almost unusable, and have so disincentivized innovators that the pipeline is dry. We have only ourselves to blame. View in LinkedIn

WE WERE WARNED. "The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant." (Sir Alexander Fleming, Nobel Lecture, 1945). https://lnkd.in/eEaXmjy View in LinkedIn

ANOTHER CONTEMPORARY QUAGMIRE of horizontal gene transfer consequences is the crisis of antibiotic resistance. All along, we knew that this would happen, we saw it emerge, we left permissive laws in place allowing 80% of antibiotics to go into fattening livestock, and then, on the brink of disaster, we cry foul. View in LinkedIn

NEW MAD COW VARIANT. "Recently, it has been demonstrated that a vast number of BSE prion-carrying, symptom-free cattle may have been consumed, and at the moment the extent of nv CJD is impossible to forecast." A ticking time bomb, with no doubt. Remember the politicians eating hamburgers on TV declaring their safety after the infamous Bush meat testing ban "testing is not scientific")? https://lnkd.in/eJ8cwgX View in LinkedIn

CHRONIC GENE LOSS WITH BURSTS OF GAINS. "The findings that in many if not most lineages evolution is dominated by gene (and more generally, DNA) loss that occurs in a roughly clock-like manner whereas gene gain occurs in bursts associated with the emergence of major new groups of organisms imply a biphasic model of evolution." https://lnkd.in/egqWFZp View in LinkedIn