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DR. FREDRICKSON: Dr. Curtiss? 
DR. CURTISS: I won't repeat what Dr. Singer said, but I will amplify 
In order to have an alternative, that alternative organism has to have 
cloning vectors. Cloning vectors are plasmids phage, which are ubiquitous 
among all micro-organisms. Therefore, any alternative, to be useful, will 
have a genetic exchange system, just like EL coli . So I think that in the 
absence of a very specific example — I really see no alternative. 
I mean, we know more about IS. coli than any other organism on the face 
of this earth. We know something like what one third of its entire genetic 
information specifies, for example. So obviously I think we know now how to 
disarm _E. coli so that humans are no longer an ecological niche. I think it 
would be important for any organism that one used to be able to disarm it so 
that its normal ecological niche would be abolished if it should get out of 
the laboratory. I mean, I don't see any difference in terms of the require- 
ments that one would demand for some other system in terms of making sure 
that the inhabitants of its normal ecological niches were not at risk if 
that organism should get out of the laboratory. I don't care whether the 
ecological niche is the soil, the moon, the polar ice caps, or whatever. 
There are organisms that are of importance to the biosphere which inhabit 
all of these locations, I guess, except for the moon, although they might 
even be there. 
DR. GOLDSTEIN: May I respond for a minute? 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Yes, you may. 
DR. GOLDSTEIN: I agree with both Maxine and Roy in what they said. I 
think that putative EK2 strain should be pushed to an EK3 strain. I mean, 
it may come about that in 2 years or 5 years the scientific community as a 
whole decides there is no better strain, and that EK3 strain is so foolproof 
that that is the best strain, but I don't see any emphasis on that. That 
is what worries me. 
I think there should be two pushes. I think there should be a push to 
get that EK2 strain tested, and a push to EK3, and then have a period of 
intensive study of that EK3 strain. I am not saying that we have any EK3 
strain, but intensive testing and at the same time there ought to be testing 
of other organisms. 
People have suggested JB. subtilis . I am not sure. It is a spore- 
former, and I don't know a lot about spores, but there are problems there. 
But I mean that kind of work should go on. 
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