Scientists worry genetically engineered plants might harm the wild ecosystem. Writing in the journal Ecological Applications, researchers from various Midwest and Plains universities say one big fear is altered genes from domesticated plants will escape and harm their wild counterparts. They tracked the movement of three specific alleles, or genes, in wild and domesticated sunflowers, which are under development for a variety of traits to make them more resistant to fungi and pests. Wild sunflowers, however, pose a problem for farmers as a weed in domesticated sunflower crops, and they could cause even more damage if a gene for insect resistance crossed into the wild population from the cultivated sunflowers. The researchers started with 100 wild plants and 100 crop-wild hybrids, observing the sunflowers for two growing seasons. The team found wild and hybrids had similar survival rates, but the wild plants produced more flower heads, more seeds per head and more seeds overall, suggesting they would dominate when competing with the gene-altered hybrid plants. The hybrid seeds also were preferred by birds and other organisms, making the chances for these plants to reproduce successfully even lower.

WATER JETS DISARM MISSILES

Researchers at the University of Missouri-Rolla used their expertise with water jets -- which have been used to find and neutralize land mines -- to help their Ukrainian counterparts disarm and dispose of that nation's Cold War-era missiles. The team was part of a project funded by the U.S. Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which is working under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to disarm the missiles and eliminate the 46 silos that existed in the Ukraine. Researchers using a specially designed water jet were able to disassemble the missiles from a safe distance. After a missile is disarmed, the casing is washed out and crushed and the propellant is recycled by blending it with emulsion explosives. Then it is used in mining in the Ukraine. This is more environmentally friendly than the traditional method of burning. More than 50 missiles were disarmed during the project -- enough to destroy every U.S. major city.

VALIDATING MATH MODELS FOR BIOLOGY

Virginia Tech researchers are using math modeling to predict biological events and then validating them. They say they have experimentally verified predictions of a math model for the regulation of irreversible transitions in and out of mitosis -- the division of genetic material during the cell cycle. Mitosis must be an all-or-nothing decision, they say, or bad mutations will result. Mathematical modeling of the cell cycle and other biological events could lead to the discovery of new targets for treating cancer and other diseases. John Tyson, a university distinguished professor, has been developing mathematical models to describe the cell cycle for years but only recently have experimentalists collaborated to test the validity of the models. The researchers wanted to test predictions made by the model regarding specific levels of the protein cyclin required to regulate cell division or mitosis. "We had to be very precise," says researcher Jill Sible. "We found that, qualitatively and quantitatively, we were able to validate three key predictions of the model regarding the amount of cyclin required to start, maintain, and stop mitosis." The goal is to build a math model of the human cell cycle that would show the underlying principles of cell regulation and be predictive.

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(EDITORS: For more information on GENE ESCAPE, contact Annie Drinkard at the Ecological Society of America by e-mail at annie@esa.org. For WATERJET, Claire Faucett, (573) 341-4328 or denboc@umr.edu, and for MATH MODEL, Jill Sible, (540) 231-1842 or siblej@vt.edu)