Gene transfer from GE rapeseed to bacteria and fungi
in guts of honey bees

By Greenpeace Germany

The German Television ZDF reported on Sunday May 21 that a German researcher found a gene transfer from genetically engineered rapeseed to bacteria and fungi in the gut of honey bees. Prof. Hans-Hinrich Kaatz from the Institut fur Bienenkunde (Institute for bee research) at the University of Jena experimented during the last three years with honey bees on an experimental field with transgenic rapeseed in Saxony, Germany.

The field trial was performed by AgrEvo, the rapeseed was engineered to resist the herbicide glufosinate (Liberty, Basta). Prof. Kaatz built nets in the field with the transgenic rapeseed and let the bees fly freely within the net. At the beehives, he installed pollen traps in order to sample the pollen loads from the bees' hindlegs when entering the hive.

This pollen was fed to young honey bees in the laboratory. (Pollen is the natural diet of young bees which need a high protein diet). Then Prof.Kaatz took the intestine out of the young bees and spread the contents on growth medium to grow the microorganisms.

He probed the microorganisms for the pat-gene, the gene that confers resistance to glufosinate. In some bacteria and also in a yeast hefound the pat-gene. This indicates that the gene from the genetically engineered rapeseed was transferred in the bee gut to the microbes.

Comment by PSRAST

The transfer of genes from GE crops to bacteria has potentially problematic consequences. Mae-Wan Ho has pointed out that there is genetic material in GE crops that is designed to counteract the mechanisms that prevent foreign DNA to attach to the chromosomes, see "Horizontal transfer of viral and bacteria DNA facilitated by GE organisms?".

This group of scientists warns that the spread of such genetic material to bacteria may promote the development of completely new strains of bacteria by promoting DNA transfer between unrelated strains of bacteria. They suggest that this might already have contributed to the remarkable increase of new and dangerous bacterial strains like the E.Coli 157 where Coli has taken up genes from an unrelated bacterium (the dysenterium bacterium Shigella). The result has been a bacteria that causes serious hemmorrhagic gastrointestinal disease that has been lethal in several cases.

If these scientists are right, Bacteria and fungi in the bee gut might become one such source of new diseases which might spread to humans through the venoms.

This is one of many examples of the increasing number of unexpected and potentially serious consequences of genetic engineering of crops. This kind of gene transfer is completely irreversible and uncontrollable. This means that if it turns out that it may generat serious problems in the ecology of microbes, there is no known means of stopping it. This is one of several examples of the kind of potential problems that made us demand a global moratorium on the release of GE organisms, see our Declaration.

Jaan Suurküla M.D.