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Saving the Planet:. One Gene at a time. OVERVIEW. Pamela Ronald: The case for engineering our food. GENOTYPE: The bits and pieces. Phenotype: Putting it all together. What is a Genetically Modified Organism?. Genetically Modified Organisms.
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Saving the Planet: One Gene at a time
OVERVIEW Pamela Ronald: The case for engineering our food
Genetically Modified Organisms • Selective Breeding: (artificial selection) the breeding of plants and animals to produce desirable traits. Organisms with the desired traits, such as size or taste, are mated or cross-pollinated with organisms with similar desired traits. • Genetic Engineering: the development and application of scientific methods, procedures, and technologies that permit direct manipulation of genetic material in order to alter the hereditary traits of a cell, organism, or population • Transgenic Organism: containing a gene or genes transferred from another species
Genetically Modified Organisms QUESTION: Keeping these definitions in mind, how much of the food that we consume contains GMOs? ANSWER: 100%
Genetically Modified Organisms 100% ANSWER: both selective breeding and genetic engineeringchange an organism’s genetic characteristics they just use different processes
Selective Breeding: I’ll take that one! By Rodney L Honeycutt [CC BY 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
Selective Breeding: I’ll take that one! Humans have selectively bred plants and animals for thousands of years crop plants with better yields farm animals that produce more and better quality i.e. meat or wool ornamental plants with particular flower shapes and colors dogs with particular phenotypes and traits, suited to do jobs like herd and protect livestock, assist with the hunt for food, etc. By Rodney L Honeycutt [CC BY 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
Genetically Engineered:Turn it up! We have the ability to turn on, turn off, and overexpress desirable traits in organisms One application of this is to increase the oil production in plants Possible to create fuels and plastics from these plant oils therefore eliminating our dependency on fossil fuel Renewable energy source Net 0 carbon and/or negative carbon footprint
Transgenetic : The Best of Both Worlds Transgenic Organisms: The Best of Both Worlds ˭
Transgenetic : The Best of Both Worlds BT CORN Bacillus thurigiensisn • Created in 1996, and by 2009 was planted on nearly 55 million acres in the United States, accounting for nearly 63 percent of the total U.S. corn crop of 87 million acres • Accomplished by introducing genes from a bacteria (Bacillus thuringiensis) into corn • Donor organism is a naturally occurring soil bacterium • Reduced global pesticide usage by 35% thus preventing their entrance into the watershed • Some farmers have not had to spray pesticides for more than 25 years
EDITING: Cut, Copy & Paste EDITING: Cut, Copy and Paste By National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) from Bethesda, MD, USA (CRISPR-Cas9 Editing of the Genome) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
EDITING: Cut, Copy and Paste CRISPR Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat or… • CRISPR-Cas9, a genome-editing tool that came to the forefront in 2012. • Allows Insertion and Deletion of Genes with Precision (aka indels) • Faulty gene can be corrected • Limitless applications in agriculture and medicine By National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) from Bethesda, MD, USA (CRISPR-Cas9 Editing of the Genome) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The Good Ladies and Gentlemen In This Corner… and Tonight’s Opponent the Bad VS. By Diego Torres Silvestre from Sao Paulo, Brazil ([2007] House of Frankenstein) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The Good… SOLVE BIG WORLD PROBLEMS Reduction in Pesticide Use Increased Crop Yields in a Changing Environment New Approaches to Medical Diagnosis and Treatment Biofuel and Plastics
The Ugly… Concerns About Health Concerns with Intellectual Property Ownership Increase in Pest and Herbicide Resistant Organisms Hard to Trust Greenpeace parody of a product containing biotech corn.
FINAL THOUGHTS What will be your Contribution? Your Legacy? You Are the Future