MINUTES OF MEETING - December 6-7 
5 
work as proposed will involve collaboration between Genentech, 
Inc., and the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. Workers from 
Genentech will reverse transcribe the FMD genome on Plum Island. 
Fragments of reverse transcription products will be cloned and 
tested for infectivity before removal from Plum Island. 
Dr. Baltimore said that provided no potentially infectious 
material is removed from Plum Island the plan seems innocuous. 
To be certain that no full length pieces are produced, 
Dr. Baltimore suggested the RAC could specify that any clone 
removed from Plum Island contain less than five thousand bases 
of FMD related DNA. Dr. Baltimore moved approval of the 
proposal with this added caveat. 
Dr. Ahmed asked how infectivity of reverse transcribed segments 
will be tested. Dr. Bachrach said that infectivity is tested by 
injection of the material into cattle, swine, and calf thyroid 
tissue cultures. Dr. Ross of Genentech said only DNA will be 
removed from Plum Island. 
Dr. Goldstein asked for information concerning the incidence of 
FMD. Dr. Bachrach responded that there have been nine outbreaks 
of FMD in the United States, the last in 1929. Dr. Goldstein 
then asked why the clones are being moved to Genentech. 
Dr. Ross responded the work at Genentech, which includes sequenc- 
ing of the clones requires a good deal of time. Dr. Goldstein 
said that sequencing is not a particularly difficult operation. 
He questioned whether movement of these clones from one place 
to another is necessary. Dr. Baltimore responded that the 
construction of an expressing clone involves state of the art 
recombinant DNA work. He said that a recombinant DNA laboratory 
could be established on Plum Island, but he did not feel that it 
should be required. 
Dr. Goldstein stated that there are defective viruses missing 
numerous genes which can be rescued. He said that limitation on 
size does not neccesarily allay his concerns on infectivity or 
potential infectivity. Dr. Baltimore asked Dr. Goldstein to 
present a scenario for the rescue of a clone which contains 5000 
base pairs of a picomovirus. Dr. Young noted that cases of 
recombination between plasmids with overlapping segments have 
been demonstrated. He suggested the RAC might want to restrict 
the experimental protocol to preclude the use of overlapping 
sequences and multiple plasmids. 
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