Genetically Engineered Algae: Adding Caution To The Optimism
Over the past several years, researchers have been hard at work modifying algae so that they will generate products that are useful to humans--including food, plastics, and pharmaceuticals. There are high hopes that algae can also be "redesigned" to produce biofuels--an attractive idea given the increasing desire to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. As pointed out in a BioScience Forum essay by Allison Snow and Val Smith, the technique offering "the greatest freedom to improve on the performance of wild strains" is the use of recombinant DNA in a "mass cultivation" setting. In other words, researchers create novel genetic sequences in a laboratory setting, introduce them into algae, and then cultivate the organisms in tanks or pools to investigate the resulting phenotype. read more