Monday, August 01, 2011

FLASHBACK: Why Did U.S. Government Secure Crop Technology Patent for Aluminum Resistant Genes? (2009)


Why is the United States' government developing aluminum-resistant genetics? The patent (US# 7,582,809) says that the purpose of the technology is to aid in areas where soil has been contaminated with aluminum. I personally think that this seed technology might also used for "chemtrail" fallout - fallout that is alleged to contain aluminum. Aluminum toxicity would decimate the organic markets, because organic seeds will not contain this aluminum-resistance gene. If aluminum toxicity increases, then it might be required of farmers to license this genetic technology in order to plant seeds that will survive in the aluminum-rich soils.

The technology appears to use cloned sorghum to create the necessary genes for geneticists to modify other food crops to be aluminum resistant.

This invention relates to a major aluminum tolerance gene, SbMATE (for Sorghum bicolor ember of the multidrug and toxic compound extrusion transporter family), that is responsible for AltSB locus (for aluminum tolerance in Sorghum bicolor), cloned from sorghum along with its native promoter and regulatory regions, a construct containing a gene and a constitutive promoter, a vector containing the construct, and a method of transforming a plant utilizing the construct and vector, and plants, including staple crop plans, transformed with the gene construct having increased tolerance to aluminum toxicity.

I didn't know what SbMATE was, but a little research revealed a typical story of the Western World allegedly stealing rights of the Third World. In this case, it is patent rights derived from a gene in sorghum, a crop in Tanzania. For further reading, check out The SbMATE Patent: American Ingenuity or Looting of a Tanzanian Resource?

Sorghum bicolor major aluminum tolerance (SbMATE) gene
• Isolated from sorghum
• Enables plants to grow normally in aluminum‐ rich soil, which is normally toxic to crops
– aluminum toxicity is one of the primary limitations for crop production in developing countries
– crops such as wheat, rice, and maize are unable to grow in aluminum‐rich soil because aluminum in such soil takes a chemical form that is toxic to them

If you want to read the full government file on this patent (including file wrappers), click here for the USPTO link. If that link is not working, then simply do a search on this page for patent #7,582,809.


No comments: