155 
On the other hand, from what I understand about the techniques we are 
discussing today, we deal with very small portions and can put them together 
not exactly in a random fashion, but at least in very unusual ways, mix 
things up in a way that typically wouldn't happen. We might come up with 
some unusual things. We more likely would come up with things that wouldn't 
work at all. A very high level of expertise, I think, is going to be needed 
to use these techniques in what I would call a useful way, much less of 
course, not to speak of a safe way. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Dr. Zaitlin, could you help us there? What is the 
novel recombinant technique with regard to plants? Make that distinction 
just a little sharper, if you can, recombinant versus conventional. 
DR. ZAITLIN: With respect to, you mean, taking the DNA from one orga- 
nism and putting it into another? Is that what you want me to respond to? 
DR. FREDRICKSON: What you were saying was that using DNA from a variety 
of organisms, bacteria and so forth, is really what we are primarily talking 
about here. 
DR. ZAITLIN: I don't think at this stage that that sort of thing is 
visualized. I think we are talking about making plant products in one plant 
active in another, or functional in another. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: I just want to try to get some ground for the Commit- 
tee to develop its own questions and comments. 
Dr. Sinsheimer. 
DR. SINSHEIMER: Following up what you were saying, one could conceive, 
I suppose, of trying to use plants as biochemical factories instead of E . 
col i . The gene for insulin that everybody talks about into a plant as well 
as E . col i , and I don't know how that would compare economically, but I just 
wondered if Dr. Zaitlin had any comments on that kind of thing, or are you 
only thinking of exchanging of genes between plants? 
MR. HUTT: Siphon off insulin like maple syrup. 
DR. ZAITLIN: I know people who make these sorts of judgments are prob- 
ably one order of magnitude removed from the people who are now doing the 
work, just trying to see whether or not it is feasible to introduce foreign 
DNA into the genome of a plant, and what would be proposed in the future, I 
think, is a scenario that we can't paint at the moment. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Now, Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a microorganism. 
It has one of the few plasmids of microorganisms that go into plants. Maybe 
it has the only one. Is that so? 
DR. CHILTON: Yes, so far as we are aware of at this point. 
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