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Medicines and foods
will be individual
Genomics shows that people have different reactions to the same substance and emerges as a great health tool

LUIZ SUGIMOTO

Professor Paulo Arruda, from the Department of Genetics and Evolution at Unicamp: “Each individual will react to a food or medicine in a different way”

Besieged by the press, one day before the deadline for changes to the bill that the government would send to the National Congress, professor Paulo Arruda, from the Department of Genetics and Evolution at Unicamp, was adamant: “I don't talk about transgenics”. As one of the coordinators of the project that led to the genetic sequencing of the first phytopathogenic bacteria, Xyllela fastidiosa, and which brought together almost 200 researchers from the country – The boys from Brazil, according to Nature magazine –, Arruda has become a mandatory source in genomics since then . Half off the record, he comments: “I don’t want to get into this discussion at the moment. It is very much in the political, emotional sphere, in the atmosphere of a game between Palmeiras and Corinthians. I’m a scientist.”

In the lecture he had just given at the 5th Slaca, in a packed hall at the Convention Center, Paulo Arruda avoided the term “transgenic”, despite the theme implicitly bringing this facet: how the generation of billions of genetic information about living organisms can impact on all areas of science, especially health, food and the environment? “From a few sequences we had in 1982, there was an exponential growth to something close to 20 billion base pairs. All genetic information, from the most varied organisms, has been concentrated in a large database in the United States, GenBank, and is made publicly available”, informs the researcher.

The genomes of humans and more than 30 bacteria are complete, with another hundred and a half studies underway. “We now know that between man and his pathogens, between plants and their pathogens, or between man and microorganisms beneficial to his health (such as bacterial flora) and between plants and the microorganisms that benefit them, there is a process of communication, of understanding, which passes through genetics. By studying the genome, we can understand how proteins produced by microorganisms and plants, in this process of communication and association, help with health”, explains Paulo Arruda.

Professor Helaine Carrer, from Esalq/USP: “As in the time of Galileo Galilei”

Paradox – The sequencing of the human genome revealed that we carry only 40 thousand genes, when estimates ranged from 100 thousand to 500 thousand genes to guarantee all the functions of our body. This great surprise and others in the genetic code provided a detailed story for the lecture, the end of which can be summarized as follows: those 40 thousand genes generate up to 500 thousand different messages, which generate 500 thousand proteins, which in turn can be modified until they reach 1,5 .1,5 million. “We are an organism that is the result of the interaction and functioning of XNUMX million proteins”, summarizes Arruda.

Too many proteins to study. What can we say, then, about the estimate that between two people there is a modification for each gene. This means that each individual is different from the other in 40 thousand modifications of the genome, where 500 thousand proteins are processed and form a complex that generates 1,5 million changes. “It is precisely this information that makes people different. So, each individual will react to a food or medicine in a different way. It will depend on random processes that create 6 billion different individuals that are interacting with the environment, with the food they eat, with the water they drink, with the air they breathe”, observes the researcher.

Individual dose – Therefore, according to Arruda, the pharmaceutical industry is already developing research based on genomics in search of individual medicines, with specific composition and dosages, following information on gene expression. “This will probably be the medicine practiced in three or five decades. Likewise, the food industry of the future will have to be somehow targeted at certain groups”, predicts the professor.

Displaying a complex metabolic map, which from a distance resembles that of a city with its roads and buildings, Paulo Arruda gives a demonstration: “If we close the lighthouse on one of these metabolic pathways, mutating a gene, the substances will accumulate as cars, becoming nutritionally important. Taking soybean oil as another example, we can block the lipid pathway, making the product healthier. It is with this technology that the industry can work to produce foods with greater or lesser quantities of substances”, he concludes.

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Bill Gates and hunger

Scientist Howarth Bouis: “Embrapa will be an important partner”

The Bill Gates Foundation is investing US$25 million – out of a total of US$95 million planned over ten years – in a research program aimed at fortifying basic foods for populations in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Scientist Howarth Bouis, director of the program, who was at Unicamp for the 5th Slaca, informs that the objective is to develop rice, beans, wheat, corn, cassava and sweet potato seeds containing substances such as iron, zinc and vitamin A.

“The healthcare community’s response to hunger and malnutrition has been the distribution of capsules and enriched foods. In addition to the fact that a large part of the population does not have access to these programs, they are very expensive. To serve all developing countries, US$1 billion per year would be needed, which is not a solution, as the same amount would need to be invested each subsequent year”, explains Bouis. He notes that seeds propagate, requiring only initial investment. “We are not even going to change the eating habits of these populations, as we are going to prioritize, for example, rice in Asia and beans and cassava in Brazil”, he adds.

Howarth Bouis says that the resources for Brazil have not yet been defined, adding only that Embrapa will be an important partner. As for Bill Gates' motivation for allocating part of his fortune to underdeveloped countries, Bouis recalls that the foundation has already been distributing vaccines and medicines against AIDS, malaria and cholera. “Their concern is to improve health conditions. This different approach, trying to solve the problem through agriculture, is a project that he really liked.”

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'Times of Inquisition' Researcher Natália Martins, from Emprapa: misinformation in criticism of GMOs The bill on transgenics, which will be submitted to the National Congress, provides for a penalty of 1 to 3 years for anyone who builds, cultivates, transports, transfers, markets, imports and exports genetically modified substances or foods without the approval of the competent bodies, as a matter of opinion. obtained by going through an exhaustive bureaucratic path. “The prohibitive items include the use and manipulation of these organisms, greatly harming research in laboratories, which depend on the transport or transfer of genetic material”, says professor Helaine Carrer, from Esalq/USP. According to her, numerous studies have been carried out to introduce new characteristics of agronomic interest, increasing nutritional value and producing pharmaceuticals in food plants such as soybeans, corn and rice. “We are undergoing an inquisitorial process, as in the time of Galileo Galilei, who said the Earth was round against the paradigm that it was flat”, criticizes researcher Natália Florêncio Martins, from the National Center for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology (Cenargen) at Emprapa. She informs that the controversy left work carried out at least five years ago on hold, including regarding the allerginity of GMOs. “Food allergies exist and affect parts of the population who avoid fish, crustaceans, cheese, etc. The concern is to verify whether foods resulting from gene modification technology also pose such a risk”, she explains. Natália Martins sees a lot of misinformation in criticism of GMOs, mostly directed by environmentalists. “Studies of transgenic canola, with hectares of production, have proven that its planting does not cause any harm to the population or biodiversity. At the same time, other research shows that genetically modified plants reduce the use of pesticides, which is good for the environment,” she argues. Papaya – A papaya modified by Embrapa is the first product licensed for field research in Brazil. Its resistance to the “ring spot virus” is being studied, which causes a black ring on the fruit and leaves, compromising commercialization – Brazil is the world's largest producer of papaya. “We are also evaluating its allergenicity”, informs the Embrapa researcher. Natália Martins states that the population must trust the opinions of the National Technical Biosafety Commission (CTNBio), which has gained an interministerial profile, and whose scientists follow the internationally established parameters for releasing modified products to the market. “The next wave of GMOs will be foods enriched with vitamins and, the third, foods containing medicines. We already have insulin, while Japan has already introduced a banana vaccine. The waves that arrive should change the population’s opinion about GMOs”, predicts the researcher.

 

 

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