Notes

Genetically modified crops are more beneficial than herbicides

Herbicide resistance may provide advantages to plants in the wild.

ラウンドアップ 樹木 : Xiao Yang
A common method of genetic modification employed to make crops resistant to herbicides was found to offer advantages over rice varieties that are weedy. https://search.rakuten.co.jp/search/mall/%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A6%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%82%A2%E3%83%83%E3%83%97/ suggests that the benefits of such modification have the potential to extend beyond the confines of farms out into the wild.

A range of crop varieties have been genetically modified so that they become resistant to Roundup herbicide glyphosate. This glyphosate resistance enables farmers to wipe out most herbicides in their fields without damaging their crop.

Glyphosate is an inhibitor of the growth of plants. It blocks an enzyme known as EPSP synthase. This enzyme is involved in the production certain amino acids as well as other molecule. These compounds could make up as much as 35% of a plant’s mass. https://www.kohnan-eshop.com/shop/g/g4957919634894/ -modification technique is used for instance, in Roundup Ready plants made by Monsanto Biotechnology Inc., a biotech firm based out of St Louis, Missouri. It involves inserting genes into the genome of the crop to increase EPSP synthase synthase synthase production. Genes are typically derived from bacteria that cause disease to crops.

This extra EPSP synthase allows plants to counteract the effects from glyphosate. Biotechnology labs also have tried to make use of genes from plants instead of bacteria to increase EPSP-synthase levels partly to make use of a loophole within US law that permits the approval of regulatory agencies for organisms that carry transgenes that are not derived from bacterial pests.

https://www.roundupjp.com/ have looked into the possibility that transgenes that confer tolerance could -- after they are weedy or become wild relatives via cross-pollinating -- increase the plants' survival and reproduce. "The traditional expectation is that any sort of transgene will confer disadvantage in the wild in the absence of selection pressure, because the extra machinery would reduce the fitness," says Norman Ellstrand, a plant geneticist at the University of California in Riverside.

But now a study led by Lu Baorong, an ecologist at Fudan University in Shanghai, is challenging that notion: it shows that the weedy version of the popular rice plant, Oryza sativa is given an important boost in fitness due to resistance to glyphosate, even when glyphosate is not used.

The study was published in 1. Lu and his colleagues genetically modified cultivated rice to enhance its EPSP synthase activity and crossed it with a weedy relative.

The group then allowed hybrid offspring of crossbreds to reproduce with each other, resulting in second-generation hybrids genetically identical except in the number of copies of gene encoding EPSP synthase. As expected, the ones with more copies had higher enzyme levels and produced more amino acid tryptophan when compared to their unmodified counterparts.

Researchers also found that plants with transgenic genes were more photosynthesis-intensive, produced more flowers, and produced 48-125percent less seeds per plant than the nontransgenic hybrids. https://search.rakuten.co.jp/search/mall/%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A6%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%82%A2%E3%83%83%E3%83%97+%E3%83%9E%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%82%B9%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89/ was in spite of the fact that glyphosate was never present.

Lu believes that making weedy aggressive rice more competitive could hinder farmers to recoup the damage caused by this insect.

"If the EPSP-synthase genes are introduced into the wild rice species, their genetic diversity, which is really essential to protect is at risk because the transgene's genetic make-up would outcompete the natural species" says Brian Ford-Lloyd an expert in plant genetics at the University of Birmingham, UK. "This is one illustration of the most probable and damaging negative effects of GM crops on the environment."

The study also challenges the notion that genetically modified plants with additional copies of their own genes are safer than the ones that have the genes of microorganisms. Lu states, "Our study shows this is not always the case."

According to some researchers this finding suggests that the future regulation of genetically engineered crops should be reconsidered. "Some people are now claiming that biosafety regulation can be eased because we've reached an extremely high level of satisfaction with two years of genetic engineering" Ellstrand says. "But the study shows that novel products still need careful examination."


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