GMO Tomato Project Funded by Gates Foundation and U.S. Taxpayers Hits Roadblock

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and DARPA, a division of the U.S. Department of Defense, are funding research to genetically engineer tomatoes to be able to disrupt the reproductive cycle of the..

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D, The Defender

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding research to genetically engineer tomatoes to be able to disrupt the reproductive cycle of the whitefly, a common insect that damages tomato plants, Jon Fleetwood reported on Substack.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — a division of the U.S. Department of Defense — also funded the research as part of its “Insect Allies” project, according to a study on the tomatoes published last month in BMC Plant Biology.

Whiteflies, or Bemisia tabaci, are a common pest that drinks sap from phloem, the food-conducting tissue in tomato plant stems and leaves, sometimes causing the plant to dry up. The insects also excrete a sticky substance called honeydew, which attracts ants.

Whiteflies can decimate crops. The BMC study estimates the pest causes $2 billion in annual losses in cassava production in Africa alone, which can cause food insecurity in regions that rely on the crop.

The researchers aim to develop a genetic modification (GM) technology that could modify plants to produce proteins that target and destroy whitefly eggs. The authors note that targeting egg viability is a “unique strategy” for transgenic plants, setting it apart from most GM insecticidal plants that target adult insects.

Fleetwood raised concerns about the technology’s potential to harm human health and the environment.

“If commercialized, these ‘[t]ransgenic plants’ — genetically engineered to include genes from other species — could introduce reproductive-disrupting insecticidal compounds into the human food chain,” Fleetwood wrote.

He continued:

“Tomatoes engineered with insecticides to disrupt reproduction may sound like a breakthrough, but they raise critical questions about safety, transparency, and the ethics of modifying food crops to attack life at its reproductive core.

“As these technologies develop, consumers have a right to know: Are these the risks we’re willing to take with our food?”

The DARPA Insect Allies program funds “scalable, readily deployable, and generalizable countermeasures” to natural and engineered threats to the U.S. food supply. The program seeks to provide “targeted therapies” to mature plants within a single growing season.

However, in this case, the researchers encountered major technical problems in their experiments, molecular geneticist Michael Antoniou, Ph.D., told The Defender. That means the product remains far from commercialization, he said.

Study hits ‘major barrier’

Fleetwood summarized the three mechanisms the genetically engineered tomatoes used to target whitefly egg viability:

1. Chitinase Production: The tomatoes are engineered to produce an enzyme derived from the fern Tectaria macrodonta that degrades chitin, a key component of insect eggshells. This enzyme is intended to kill the developing embryos inside the eggs.

2. Reproductive Hijacking: Using synthetic vitellogenin domains (SynVg), the proteins mimic natural reproductive pathways in whiteflies, ensuring the insecticides are delivered directly into the eggs.

3. Enhanced Uptake: Protein transduction domains (PTD) facilitate the transport of these insecticidal compounds from the insect’s gut to its reproductive system.

Antoniou explained that to track how these mechanisms worked, the researchers used a transgene that encodes an easily detectable fluorescent protein, mCherry, which allowed them to easily monitor whether the transgene was expressed.

Using mCherry they targeted plant parts — the the phloem and the apoplast, or space around the plant cells — that the insects will eat.

In principle, Antoniou said, the pest would ingest any insecticidal protein expressed in these parts of the plant. However, when the researchers fed whiteflies the mCherry-expressing GM tomatoes, they did not detect the fluorescent protein in the insects, including in their eggs, as intended.

While the authors couldn’t explain why the transgene was absent in the flies that ate the tomatoes, they said an innate protein-degrading defense mechanism in the eggs may have caused the issue, Antoniou said.

“The authors acknowledge that this natural defence mechanism constitutes a major barrier to taking this technology forward.”

He also noted that because the researchers were initially having problems detecting the transgene in the engineered tomatoes, they had to use suckers — plants that grow from the roots of the host plant.

“Problems of transgene expression silencing and, more strikingly, major deformities were observed in these sucker plant clones,” Antoniou said. “This is not unexpected, given the known tendency for transgene silencing and the highly mutagenic nature of the GM transformation process as a whole, which can lead to major DNA damage and disruptions in gene expression patterns.”

How would the technology affect humans?

Fleetwood warned that embedding pest control into food crops represents a “seismic shift in agriculture.” Proponents argue it reduces chemical pesticide use, but critics point to concerns about the unintended consequences of such technologies.

He criticized the study for failing to address “the risks of disrupting reproduction in target species, harming non-target organisms, and exposing humans to novel proteins.”

Although the researchers experimented with an ornamental tomato variety, applying this technology to food crops for human consumption raises health concerns, Antoniou said.

He explained:

“A crucial missing piece of information is whether the transgenes are expressed in mature tomato fruits. If they are, then the consumer would be ingesting insecticidal proteins, with unknown health consequences.

“Although this would not result in direct reproductive concerns in the case of the chitinase (because humans, including human eggs, don’t contain chitin), there could be toxic or allergic reactions.”

GM Watch Editor Claire Robinson said that because the GM technology used in the study focuses on the production of chitinase, an enzyme that breaks down chitin, it won’t directly affect human fertility. “Chitin is only present in insects/insect eggs and fungi, and not in mammals, including humans.”

However, that doesn’t mean it’s harmless to humans, she said. “Ingesting this GMO-produced insecticide may have adverse health effects on humans, which are unpredictable. It may also harm non-target and beneficial insects, whose exoskeletons and eggs contain chitin.”

Robinson added:

“Having said all that, judging by the paper published in the journal, this technology doesn’t seem to be working well and Gates and DARPA need to face the reality that they will need to pump large amounts of funds into a project that may never succeed.

“Insects can rapidly adapt to technologies and products intended to kill them and it’s likely that even if this technology is developed to a point where it initially seems to work, it could have a limited window of effectiveness.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

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