sor to Vitamin A that normally occurs only in the plant's leaves.
Golden rice has the potential to promptly remedy Vitamin A deficiency in the world's poorest, most poorly nourished communities, Tierney said.
Critics, such as the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace, argue that in the long run, providing a greater diversity of grains, fruits and vegetables, would offer those communities a less risky, time-tested remedy.
A polarized discussion of GMOs plays into the hands of well-funded interest groups at each extreme of the spectrum, Tierney said.
Lost in this shuffle, she added, are useful discussions over how the general public has come to associate GMOs with the agendas of large corporations.
The correlation is understandable. Our highest-profile transgenic crops feature in quarterly earnings of Monsanto, Dupont and other giants.
But the decision to plant a monoculture or clear-cut a hillside, or spay a crop in herbicide can — and should — become decoupled from an association with GMOs, Tierney said.
Just as plausible, she added, are transgenic plants that enhance local food systems and reduce pesticide use.
Avoiding GMO foods
The notion provokes yet another tricky conversation.
Step one is pretty simple, Tierney says: Stay away from high-fructose corn syrup and soybean oil — the most common source of transgenic plants in processed food.
Step two: Restrict your diet to certified organic foods, which are produced without GMOs.
But a closer look shreds any notion of purity.
"There can't be a 'zero tolerance' for GMOs," Tierney said. "It's impossible. For example, in the case of corn, you'd have to test every kernel on every ear — because each of those is an individual pollination event."
Thorough, fool-proof testing, in other words, would not only be prohibitively expensive and time consuming, but would reduce every kernel in that ear of corn to mush.
Tierney offered one glimmer of certainty: A broad swath of scientists, relying on a plethora of peer-reviewed research on pre- and post-GMO health statistics, have found no credible reason to conclude that foods produced from current GMO crops are unsafe to eat.
Elsewhere on the UVM campus, the subject veered in the direction of GMO-propelled cars.
Transgenic corn, which is fermented by yeast into ethanol, has already transformed vast tracks of the Midwest.
Other techniques for cultivating biofuels — from diesels to aviation fuels — are being tested on a much smaller scale at the lab of Mary Dunlop, a bioengineer and professor at College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences.
Yet again, bacteria play a leading role.
E. coli, a gut-friendly organism, converts sugars into alcohols or other hydrocarbons. As with yeast in a batch of wine, alcohol concentrations reach a level of toxicity to the bacteria, and the process stops.
Dunlop is examining ways to boost E. coli's production.
Using a genetic process called transformation, she is able to introduce genes that control tolerance to biofuels, and the efficiency by which that metabolic "waste" is released.
Dunlop sticks with E. coli because of its rapid reproductive rate, its relatively simple cellular structure "and because you can just put them in the freezer for the weekend if you want to go home."
Before returning to her work, Dunlop noted another arena for genetically modified E. coli: the production of insulin for diabetics.
Dean Tom Vogelmann elaborated.
"People overlook that this new technology has transformed pharmaceuticals and medicine," he said.
"You can imagine the relief worldwide when all of the sudden you could make pure human insulin within bacterial cells. It seems to be accepted."
E. coli can be selectively modified not only to kick off vaccines, but also to perish if it escapes the confines of the lab — a safety measure more secure than the old-school method of cultivating, storing and transporting deadly pathogens, Vogelmann added.
Quickly, naturally mutating microbes pose the ultimate biological threat to humanity, he concludes.
"Viruses and retroviruses are notorious for dumping DNA into human cells