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The advantages of genetically modified crops over weeds

Wild plants might be able to resist herbicides.

Credit goes to Xiao Yang
Genetic modification to create crops resistant to herbicides has been widely employed to create advantages for species of rice that are weedy. ラウンドアップ suggests that the effects of such modifications could extend beyond farms and into the wild.

A wide range of crop varieties have been modified genetically so that they become immune to Roundup herbicide glyphosate. This makes it possible for farmers to remove the majority of the weeds that grow in their fields without causing harm to their crops.

Glyphosate can inhibit plant growth by inhibiting EPSP synase, an enzyme involved in the production amino acids, as well as other chemical compounds that comprise about 35% of plant mass. ラウンドアップ used for Roundup Ready crops by Monsanto (based in St Louis in Missouri) is the process of inserting genes into the crop to increase EPSP synthase's output. Genes are usually derived from bacteria that infect the crops.

This additional EPSP synthase permits plants to counteract the effects of glyphosate. Biotechnology laboratories are looking to use genes from plants rather than bacteria to increase EPSP synthase. This is partly because the US law allows approval by the regulatory authorities to allow organisms that have transgenes to be accepted.

There aren't many studies that have looked into the possibility that transgenes similar to those which confer glyphosate resistance can make plants more competitive for reproduction and even survival after they are introduced to wild or weedy relatives through cross-pollination. "The common belief is that any sort of transgene could cause disadvantage in the wild in absence of pressure to select, because the additional machinery could reduce the fitness," says Norman Ellstrand an expert in plant genetics at the University of California in Riverside.

Lu Baorong (an ecologist at Fudan University, Shanghai) has now questioned that opinion. It has proven that resistance to glyphosate provides significant benefits to fitness for the weedy rice crop known as Oryza Sativa even when it is not being used.

https://www.pinterest.com/roundup66cfwt823/ and his colleagues genetically modified the rice species to express its EPSP synthase, and then crossed-bred it to the plant that was weedy.

The researchers then allowed offspring cross-bred to breed with one another, creating second generation hybrids that are genetically similar to their parents, except for the number of duplicates of the gene that codes for EPSP synthase. The ones who had more copies expressed higher levels of the enzyme and also produced more amino acids tryptophan than the unmodified ones.

Researchers also discovered that the transgenic hybrids had higher rates of photosynthesis, produced more flowers and shoots and produced 48 to 125 percent more seeds per plant than non-transgenic hybrids -with or without glyphosate.

Lu believes making weedy, invasive rice more competitive may make it harder for farmers to recoup the damage caused by this bug.

"If ラウンドアップ -synthase gene is introduced into the wild rice species their genetic diversity, which is really important to conserve is at risk because the genotype with the transgene would outcompete the normal species," says Brian Ford-Lloyd who is a plant geneticist at the University of Birmingham, UK. " ラウンドアップ is one instance of the most likely and harmful effects of GM crops on the environment."

ラウンドアップ challenges the idea that crops with genetically modified genes containing more copies of their genes are less risky than crops that have microorganism genes. "Our study shows that this is not necessarily the case," Lu says. Lu.

Researchers have concluded that the findings call for an overhaul of how genetically modified crops are regulated in the near future. Ellstrand says that "some people are now of the opinion that biosafety regulations could be relaxed since we have a a high degree of comfort with genetic engineering for two decades." "But ラウンドアップ demonstrates that the new technologies require cautious examination."


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