Biography:

Dr Brian Johnson was until recently Senior Advisor on Biotechnology to the British Statutory Nature Conservation Agencies at English Nature, one of the UK governments advisors on nature conservation. He has been closely involved in the debate on potential effects of GMOs on biodiversity and other aspects of the environment. After pursuing academic research in population genetics and ecology, he has spent the last 20 years in nature conservation. He has written numerous articles in the scientific and popular press about biosafety, conservation and the impact of biotechnology on the environment. Dr Johnson sits on several advisory committees concerned with biological research, regulating the release of GMOs into the environment, and the development of more sustainable farming methods. In 2004 he chaired the panel reviewing biosafety within CGIAR. He is a member of the design and authorship team of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, an initiative launched by the World Bank/UNEP in 2003.

Abstract:

Post Darwinian biology are we entering a new era?

Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace are universally famous for their theory of the origin of species by natural selection, but there was another side to Darwins life that has been largely overlooked. He was fascinated by plant and animal breeding using artificial selection, carrying out many breeding programmes himself, especially as an enthusiastic and highly respected pigeon breeder. He corresponded with breeders throughout the world and asked many questions that still puzzle conventional breeders. Modern genetics has now answered many of his questions and has cast a new light on some of the problems that occupied Darwins mind. For example: Why is there so much variation within one species but seemingly not in others? and How closely related are varieties of plants and animals bred by humans? Darwin also wondered about how variation originated and why sometimes large changes in physical appearance suddenly appeared in for example pigeon breeding? As Darwin said Many laws regulate variation, some few of which can be dimly seen

We now have answers to these questions and many others that Darwin and Wallace posed to science. Our quest to answer their questions has led to one of the greatest revolutions in human understanding molecular genetics. Scientists are on the brink of being able to produce entirely synthetic designer organisms, a revolution in breeding that may make the use of natural variation largely redundant. Darwins statement that Any variation that is not inherited is unimportant for us may still hold true, but mining natural variation may not be enough to produce organisms that we will need to cope with the vast changes in climate, hydrology and land use that future generations will face. We are now entering the new world of synthetic biology where we will have the ability radically to reconstruct organisms and biological systems to do many of the things that we now do with fossil fuels, industrial processes and agriculture.