Gene-Splicing Revolution?

The claim is so dramatic and startling that some biologists, perhaps mindful of the recent flap over test-tube atomic fusion, have been wary of taking it at face value. But an experiment reported by researchers at the University of Rome and at that city's Institute of Biomedical Technology may mean that the genetic engineering of animals -- grafting characteristics from one organism onto another -- has taken a major step forward.

Instead of using the conventional technique of painstakingly inserting / foreign genes into an egg cell with a tiny needle, the scientists simply bathed sperm cells in a solution of bacterial DNA. The sperm, from mice, incorporated the genes by some still unknown process, then went on to fertilize eggs in a test tube. As the mice matured, 30% of them produced an enzyme normally made only by bacteria -- proof that the bacterial DNA had become part of the mice's genetic makeup.

The experiment has been called a potential "cornerstone in biology." Maybe so, but it will hardly make genetic engineering a kitchen-table technology. Advocates of gene transplants have long pointed to the potential benefits of altered animals -- disease-resistant pigs, fast-growing cows and the like. Medical researchers are already using engineered mice to study the mechanics of cancer and heart disease. But genetic engineering is a process that involves many difficult steps, and the new breakthrough will at best simplify just one of them.

Those limitations should help allay the worst fear of biotech watchers: the new technique could be used by unethical researchers to manipulate the genetic makeup of humans. "It's amazing if true, and would make our work much easier," says Steven Holtzman of Embryogen Corp., a biotechnology firm with labs in Princeton, N.J. But no one is about to abandon the standard technique until other scientists complete tests of the Italians' work -- a process that is already well under way.