• Question: do you think GM produce is a good idea??

    Asked by haring7r2 to Sara, Amy on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi haring7r2! Good question! It really relates science back to society!

      I personally am very much behind GM produce. A fascinating thing about all life on Earth is that we share a common genetic machinery: we are all based on the same molecule – DNA. DNA in a goat, a tree, and a jellyfish is all the same molecule, it might be arranged differently to encode different information about what makes goats, trees, and jellyfish unique but it is still the same kind of molecule. It therefore is perfectly natural for us to rearrange parts of this molecular machinery to make better foods. In fact dog breeding and selective farming used in agriculture for centuries effectively do the same thing, just at a slower pace. They actually selective change the genetic makeup of puppies to make all the breeds we see today, or make corn yellow, or apples juicier or whatever. So I don’t see GM produce as a threat (of course that is not to say people couldn’t use this the wrong way – but fortunately I have mostly not seen this to be the case).

      Why I am a really for GM modified foods though is that they make it possible to engineer crops that can be grown under a variety of conditions previously not possible. GM produce makes it possible for us to feed a much larger portion of the population. What I don’t like is using that as an excuse to say overpopulation is ok – its not. But it is really nice to be able to feed the people we have a nutritious meal. And I think GM really helps with that =)

    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hey! great question! I think that GM technology is something that can be used for a lot of good purposes and a lot of bad. We have to be very clear on what we are actually doing when we muck about with an organisms DNA. Essentially, as Sara said, all organisms contain the same molecule i.e. DNA – but recent developments in biology have shown that it is a lot more complex than that. There are higher levels of organisation by what used to be thought of as “junk” DNA, epigenetic modifications and imprinting that can control when genes in the DNA are and aren’t expressed. So, if we are to introduce genes into an organism, or try and manipulate the control of existing genes we must be very careful how we do it and how much we know about what we are doing. There are elements of control we know nothing about yet!!

      Genetic engineering of crops etc can have many beneficial uses – and a lot of what we eat is already modified in some way – or enhanced from what it would be naturally…but we have to be careful in the application of this technology. One brilliant thing about life on earth is diversity – if we create a “super-crop” we feed the world but we may outcompete the crops that are already there and once this diversity is lost we can’t reclaim it. Then we have problems of unexpected diseases hitting our super-crop and being left at square one!

      People are trying to get round this by creating stock databases of all the different strains of particular plants e.g. wheat…but there’s a long way to go.

      So GM can be a good idea…but it needs a lot of research!

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