Notes

Genetically modified plants are more efficient than the weeds

In nature, resistance to herbicides could confer advantages to plants.

Credit to Xiao Yang
The most common method for genetic modification of crops to make them resistant to herbicides is found to confer advantages to weedy varieties of rice even when the herbicide is not present. These findings suggest that such modifications could have a wide variety of impacts that extend beyond farms, and even in the wild.

Many crops have been genetically modified in order to resist the effects of glyphosate. https://myspace.com/roundup11ubdo was first available under the trade name Roundup. Farmers are able to eliminate the weeds that grow in their fields with glyphosate, without harming their crops because of this resistance.

Glyphosate is a deterrent to plant growth. It blocks an enzyme known as EPSP synthase. This enzyme is involved for the production of certain amino acids and other molecules. These substances can account for up to 35% of the plant's mass. Genetic modification -- utilized, for instance, in the Roundup Ready crops made by the biotechnology giant Monsanto which is headquartered in St Louis, Missouri -- typically includes inserting genes into a crop's genome to increase the production of EPSP synthase. Genes are typically derived from bacteria that infects the crops.

The extra EPSP synthase helps the plant resist the effects of glyphosate. Biotechnology labs have tried using plant genes to boost EPSP synthase production. https://coub.com/roundup33eahr032 was done in part to make use of a loophole that is in US law that permits the regulatory approval of organisms containing transgenes that have not been derived from pests caused by bacteria.

Few studies have examined whether transgenes which confer glyphosate resistance can increase the competitiveness of plants in reproductive success and longevity once they are introduced to wild or weedy relatives through cross-pollination. "The traditional expectation is that any sort of transgene will confer disadvantage in the wild in absence of any selection pressure because the extra machinery would lower the fitness," says Norman Ellstrand an expert in plant genetics at the University of California in Riverside.

Lu Baorong is an Ecologist in Fudan University Shanghai. https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit shows that resistance to glyphosate is a major fitness benefit even when it isn't applied.

Lu and his colleagues modified cultivars of rice to increase the production of EPSP synthase. They also crossed the modified rice with a weedy-related. Their research was published in NewPhytologist 1.

https://peatix.com/user/14857885 allowed the offspring of cross-breeding to cross-breed with one other to create second-generation hybrids. They were genetically identical with the exception of the amount of EPSP synthase genes they carried. Likely, the ones who had more copies expressed higher amounts of the enzyme and produced more amino acids tryptophan than their non-modified counterparts.

Researchers also discovered that plants with transgenic genes showed higher rates of photosynthesis and produced more flowers and produced 48-125percent less seeds per plant than the nontransgenic hybrids. This was in spite of the fact that glyphosate was never present.

Lu claims that making weedy crops more competitive could cause more problems to farmers around the world who have crops infected by the pest.

Brian Ford-Lloyd (a UK plant geneticist) says that if the EPSP-synthase gene is introduced into wild rice species, their genetic diversity which is essential to protect could be at risk. The transgene will outcompete natural species. " https://www.blurb.com/user/roundup44hyo is one clear example of the extremely plausible detrimental effects [of GM plantson the surroundings."

Many people believe that genetically modified plants containing more replicas of their own genes than those from microorganisms are more safe. This is not supported by this study. "Our study suggests that this isn't necessarily the case," says Lu.

Researchers believe that the findings call for a reconsideration of the way that genetically modified crops are regulated in the future. Ellstrand says that some people believe that biosafety regulations could be relaxed since we have two years of genetic engineering. The study found that any new products need to be carefully evaluated.


Website: https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit