What are Genetically Modified (GM) foods?
Although “biotechnology” and “genetic modification” commonly are used interchangeably, GM is a special set of technologies that alter the genetic makeup of such living organisms as animals, plants, or bacteria. Biotechnology, a more general term, refers to using living organisms or their components, such as enzymes, to make products that include wine, cheese, beer, and yogurt. Combining genes from different organisms is known as recombinant DNA technology, and the resulting organism is said to be “genetically modified,” “genetically engineered,” or “transgenic.” GM products (current or in the pipeline) include medicines and vaccines, foods and food ingredients, feeds, and fibers. Locating genes for important traitssuch as those conferring insect resistance or desired nutrientsis one of the most limiting steps in the process. However, genome sequencing and discovery programs for hundreds of different organisms are generating detailed maps along with data-analyzing technologies to unders
What are genetically modified (GM) foods? Man has been “genetically modifying” everything from food to dogs for many centuries; but in the past, the only tool has been selective breeding . For example, if you wanted to create a breed of corn with resistance to a certain fungus, you would plant a plot of corn and see how individual plants did with the fungus. Then you would take seeds from the plants that did well, plant them, look at their performance against the fungus and so on over the years until you had created a strain of corn plant that had very high resistance to the fungus in question. Using selective breeding techniques, people have created everything from variegated roses to giant pumpkins to strains of wheat with twice the yield and very high disease tolerance. In the same way, you can take chickens, analyze their eggs and find chickens with eggs that contain less cholesterol. Then you can breed them to create a
