Genetic Modification

Sean Beggs AS General Studies Module 2

Introduction

I am going to begin with explaining what genetic material is and where it is found. I will explain the scientific facts and moral issues associated with Genetically Modificated foods and DNA.

The Collins English Dictionary Definition of Genetic is ‘the scientific study of hereditary of individuals, esp. of inherited characteristics; the study of physiology of reproduction and the art of breeding’.

The genetic material is DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). It is usually found in every cell, from microorganisms that have only one cell, to plants and animals that have many cells, where the cells make up tissues and organs. The cell and its constituents can be seen only with the help of increasingly powerful microscopes (see picture, right).

Inside a cell from a plant or animal, the genetic material is enclosed in a spherical compartment, the nucleus. It is packaged into long compact structures called chromosomes. The totality of all the genetic material packaged into chromosomes is the genome. Each species has a different genome. For example, there are 23 pairs of chromosomes in the human genome, one of each pair from each parent. Bacteria have chromosomes, which are not enclosed in a nucleus. The E.coli bacterium, which lives in the gut of mammals and human beings, has only one chromosome in its genome.

Each chromosome is really a very long molecule of DNA wound up and coiled around special proteins to form chromatin. (In animals and plants, each chromosome is duplicated but remains joined up at one point.) The DNA molecule itself, when stripped of all the bound proteins, consists of two strands wound around each other in a double helix. Each thread is made up of a long string of units joined end to end. There are four different units in DNA, labelled with the letters A, T, G, and C, which standing for the identifying bases for each unit, adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine.

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The bases of the two DNA strands pair up, A in one strand with T on the other, and G with C. The bases stick out at right angles from the backbone of each strand, with the result that the double helix looks like a spiral ladder, with the paired bases forming the rungs of the ladder. Each strand is a template for making the other strand, and this provides the basis for exact replication, which is one of the functions of the genetic material.

DNA is the genetic material in all organisms. Many viruses - genetic ...

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DNA is the genetic material in all organisms. Many viruses - genetic parasites that depend on the cell to multiply copies of them - make use of RNA as genetic material. RNA is similar to DNA except that in place of the base thymine, it has uracil, and it usually does not exist in double-stranded forms.

I am now going to write about our capability and knowledge of botany or plants, or GM Foods as it would be.
We can use genetic engineering to improve our crops to give better yields, produce less wastage, require fewer nutrients, and keep off insects and many other advantages, such as improving their nutritional value and quality.
But we are still unable to make plants synthesize some valuable enzymes, chemicals and biopolymers other than at very high costs.
There are many plants that we have already manipulated for the reasons shown.
Here are some common plants that have been manipulated:

Apples, Cotton, Walnut, Tomatoes, Rice and potatoes are among many plants that have been manipulated with a toxin for resistance against insects.

Potatoes, Plums, Peanuts, Lettuce, and Cucumbers are in a growing list of plants that can be grown to tolerate herbicides.

But how do we genetically manipulate all of these and many more to have the characteristics that we desire?

Before genes could be genetically modified GM farmers would still be able to get their desired crop by cross breeding this is where a gene encoding a desirable trait is breed with a related variety that carries the gene.
Farmers would use this process with cows until they got the optimum yield out of them cross breeding them over and over again
Another way to create genetic changes is by using radiation, this is called radiation mutagenesis. In this process plants or plant cells are bombarded with radiation that damages DNA, causing changes at random, some of which produce useful results. But these results are never certain a scientist could use this technique, which is far more expensive to, and never reach the perfect result.
Although Genetically modified plants are more costly in the short run they are relatively cheap to say the results are near perfect all the time and we never have to worry about being able to do the experiment again because its recorded and is easily possible to do the exact experiment again.
Genetic engineering is a recent technique for improving crop plants. It is a process where a single gene is added to a plants complement of genes, together with a gene that provides a marker, which allows plants carrying the first gene to be identified.
It does this by hitching a lift with a DNA fragment from a natural engineer, or by bombarding plant tissue with tiny gold particles covered in DNA. Whole plants are then regenerated from the genetically modified plant cells by culturing and applying plant hormones. By using this process it eradicates the transfer of large numbers of unidentified, possibly undesirable, genes, which is inevitable in traditional plant breeding.
So this is why some groups are trying their hardest to convince people that GM foods aren’t that bad because they are much more precise and predictable than the older conventional techniques. It also allows for genes to be introduced into a crop plant from any source.
But GM foods today have a lot of opposition from certain groups that discourage the use of genetic engineering on plants and animals. In the present day Genetic engineering is becoming more popular (as the next paragraph shows) and will be required more in the future for various aspects of human life.

This data show how the use of GM crops has increased in the US from 1996 to 2000.

1999: GM crops cover 25% of US Cropland - over 98 million acres

~37-45% of all corn is genetically engineered
~47-55% of all soybeans are genetically engineered
~48-50% of all cotton is genetically engineered
Over 50 GM crops have been approved by the USDA - potatoes, tomatoes, melons, beets,
Many more - strawberries, rice, wheat, apples, cucumbers, etc - test crops

So what really are the benefits of GM foods?
There have been many bold claims about GM foods, such as:

Look better
Require less intensive farming methods
Need less pesticide use
Have longer shelf lives than conventional crops.
To protect certain crops from insect damage, every year insects cause over $7billion of damage to corn.

Although these are quite bold claims they are all being proven now elsewhere in the world and those that are unproven promise to be very soon.

At this moment in time there are three GM foods that have been approved for use in the UK they are Soya beans, slow ripening tomatoes and insect resistant maize.

Slow ripening tomatoes
These have a much higher solid content than conventional ones, reducing the waste and processing costs in the production of tomato paste. A total of 2,000,000 tins of clearly labeled GM tomato paste have been sold in the U.K since its introduction in 1996.

Soya beans
In 1998 Herbicide resistant Soya made up more than half of USA’s Soya crop and more than 70% of Argentineans and is popular with farmers throughout America
It is hard to gain consumer acceptance in the U.K due to the lack of clear benefit to the consumer and due to it being herbicide resistant the consumer believes that this means using more.

Maize
The maize approved for use in the UK contains a special gene (Bacillus thuringiensis). This is a toxin to most insects, mainly catapillars and the bacteria itself has been used as an insecticide by organic farmers for many years.

Some people have a view that there is no point fussing about the choice of our foods in the supermarkets and to think about others that are less fortunate than ourselves. The promises made by the super rich GM companies to try and combat this problem don’t seem to be working so they should just let nature do its thing. We have survived until now without GM products so there is no great need for them.

I believe that the way forward is with genetic modification, many things are gained from this and there are few disadvantages. We will in time be able to make plants with up to ten times the nutrients of those today and at minimal extra cost because the research that will be carried out in the future. The world will come to terms with the fact that genetic modification is part of life and that in the near future it will help save lives.