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Speaker 1: Government's taking genetic editing out of the lab that's been

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Speaker 1: confirmed from as early as next year. At low risk

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Speaker 1: and well understood gene technologies can be used outside of

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Speaker 1: the laboratory settings without any regulation. It's been banned for

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Speaker 1: thirty years. A dedicated regulator will be set up to

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Speaker 1: manage the gene technologies. And Michael Buntz is with the

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Speaker 1: Otaga University and Curtain University, is a professor genetics expert

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Speaker 1: and he's with us this morning. Mike, Good morning, Good

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Speaker 1: morning Ryan. What has changed in genomeniting since nineteen ninety

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Speaker 1: six or since the late nineties.

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Speaker 2: An awful lot since over the last thirty years, we've

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Speaker 2: gone from things like the human genome costing four billion

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Speaker 2: dollars and taking a decade complete to now been done

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Speaker 2: for about one thousand dollars in a day. And we've

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Speaker 2: had the advent of new things, you know, are a

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Speaker 2: jargons such as Crisper, which is the ability to edit genes.

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Speaker 2: So we've got lots of genetic information out there, got

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Speaker 2: the ability to sort of find and replace function within

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Speaker 2: the genome if you like.

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Speaker 1: So it's quicker, it's more efficient, is it safer?

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Speaker 2: If it is so these new precision editing tools, as

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Speaker 2: I set, it's a bit of a fine and replaced

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Speaker 2: within a document, so we're able to sort of look

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Speaker 2: for a specific word within a document and replace it

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Speaker 2: with another piece of genetic code quite easily. So it's

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Speaker 2: moved into the realm of called precision editing. So we've

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Speaker 2: always edited the DNA of the organisms around us, especially

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Speaker 2: things like crops et cetera, because they we've done it

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Speaker 2: through selective breeding over thousands of years, but that is

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Speaker 2: speeding up this. So now we've got these gene editing

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Speaker 2: tools which are sort of almost indistinguishable away from domestic

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Speaker 2: breeding that's occurred over over decades.

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Speaker 1: So we've been doing this outside already, and now we're

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Speaker 1: going to be able to do it in the lads.

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Speaker 2: We've been you know, I guess that through that domestication

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Speaker 2: process and choosing different variants similar golden kiwi fruit. We've

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Speaker 2: been doing it for I think, and now we're going

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Speaker 2: to sort of like speed up that process. And you

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Speaker 2: know what the government has signaled in this new gene

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Speaker 2: Technology bill, and we're still light on details about what

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Speaker 2: it's going to do, but it's going to it's going

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Speaker 2: to bring us in line with what's happening internationally. We're

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Speaker 2: saying some of these low risk applications, we're going to

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Speaker 2: move away from, you know, a fully precautionary approach that

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Speaker 2: we've got in the moment into into something that's slightly

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Speaker 2: more permissive.

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Speaker 1: And slightly more grown up. In the approach we're taking

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Speaker 1: what there's a pine tree example that you talk about.

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Speaker 2: What is that. Yeah, well, there's lots of applications of

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Speaker 2: the gene technology. We're using it for making medicines such

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Speaker 2: as in zelin. At the moment, we're using it for

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Speaker 2: cancer cells. But when we're talking about you know, planting

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Speaker 2: things in New Zealand for the first time. We've got

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Speaker 2: lots of genetically modified organisms in New Zealand at the

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Speaker 2: moment in terms of meat, distance and food. But when

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Speaker 2: we're talking about using it actually growing our own material

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Speaker 2: in New Zealand, we've got to look at examples of that.

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Speaker 2: Or one of those examples is a sterile pine tree.

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Speaker 2: So we know about the problem of wilding pines in

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Speaker 2: New Zealand that they spread into the conservation estate and

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Speaker 2: onto farmlands. And you know, one of the applications that's

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Speaker 2: been touted is just when you put a pine tree

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Speaker 2: in the ground, if it can't reproduce, it stays where

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Speaker 2: it is, so we don't end up with this big

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Speaker 2: seed bank sort of moving all around New Zealand.

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Speaker 1: So we can desect pine trees, we.

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Speaker 2: Can, and that you know, sign has been developing that

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Speaker 2: technology for years and you know a huge industry for

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Speaker 2: New Zealand, but also a major environmental problem. So these

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Speaker 2: are the sort of win wind examples that the government

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Speaker 2: wants to take a closer look at rather than this

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Speaker 2: sort of quite precautionary approach. So it's not really been

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Speaker 2: banned in New Zealand. It's the wrong set of technology,

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Speaker 2: but it's been so precautionary and there's been so much

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Speaker 2: red tape and hoop jumping that's going on that that

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Speaker 2: it's starting to create problems for us.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, really interesting and I'm very excited to see where

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Speaker 1: some of this research might lead. It's Michael Buntz. He

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Speaker 1: is a genetics expert. He's with OTAGA and Kirton University

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Speaker 1: as a professor.

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