Herbicide resistance could provide advantages to plants in the wild.
Credit goes to Xiao Yang
One of the most common methods employed to make crops resistant to herbicides was found to offer advantages over rice varieties that are weedy. This suggests that these modifications may be detrimental to the environment beyond farms.
Many kinds of plants have been genetically altered to resist glyphosate. Roundup was the first herbicide that was marketed. ラウンドアップ The resistance to glyphosate enables farmers to get rid of herbicides, without causing damage to their crop.
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 as well as other molecules. These substances can account for up to 35% of a plant’s mass. Genetic modification, like the Roundup Ready crops manufactured by Monsanto in St. Louis, Missouri, involves inserting genes to a crop’s genetic code to increase EPSP production. Genes usually come from bacteria that infect plants.
The plant is able to withstand the effects of glyphosate because of the additional EPSP synthase. Biotechnology labs have also tried to utilize genes from plants instead of bacteria to boost the production of EPSP synthase and, in turn, to take advantage of an inconsistency in US law that permits regulatory approval of organisms carrying transgenes that aren’t made from bacterial pests.
ラウンドアップ There aren’t many studies that have examined the possibility that transgenes that confer tolerance may — once they are weedy or become wild relatives through cross-pollinating- increase the plants’ survival and reproduction. ラウンドアップ Norman Ellstrand of University of California Riverside states, “The conventional expectation is that any transgene found in the wild could cause disadvantages if there is no pressure to select because the added machinery can lower the health.”
Lu Baorong (an ecologist at Fudan University, Shanghai) has now challenged that view. It has shown that resistance to glyphosate provides a significant fitness boost to a weedy rice crop called Oryza Sativa even when it is not being used.
Lu and his coworkers modified cultivars of rice to make more EPSP synthase. They also crossed the modified rice with a weedy related. Their work was published in NewPhytologist 1.
The group allowed the offspring of crossbreeding to crossbreed with each other, creating second-generation hybrids genetically identical to each other except for the amount of copies the gene encoding EPSP synase. The team discovered that the ones that had more than one copy of the gene that codes for EPSP synthase had more enzyme expression and produced more tryptophan which is what we expected.
Researchers also found that transgenic plants had higher rates for photosynthesis, produced more flowers, and produced 48-125% fewer seeds per plant than the nontransgenic hybrids. This was despite the fact that glyphosate was never present.
Lu believes that making weedy invasive rice more competitive may hinder farmers to repair the damage caused by this insect.
Brian Ford-Lloyd (a UK plant geneticist) says that if the EPSP-synthase genes gets into wild rice species, then their genetic diversity that is essential to protect could be at risk. The transgene would surpass the natural species. “This is among the most clear instances of the extremely damaging impacts [of GM crops] on the environment.”
https://www.zennoh.or.jp/eigi/research/pdf/gr334_06.pdf The general public believes that plants with genetically modified genes containing more than one copy of their genes than microorganisms are safe. This is also challenged by this study. Lu declares that “our study is not proving that this is the case.”
Researchers say the findings call for an overhaul of how genetically modified plants are regulated in the near future. Ellstrand claims that some people believe that biosafety regulations could be relaxed since we have two years of genetic engineering. https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/search/search?rkf=2&p=%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A6%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%82%A2%E3%83%83%E3%83%97&aucmaxprice=999999999&thumb=1&s1=score2&o1=a&isdd=1&ei=utf-8&fixed=3&nockie=1&isnext=1&ex_cat=2084006160,2084008038,2084034075&rewrite_ok_wand_re_search=1 The study does not prove that the new products are secure.