GMO NOTES

1. The drug, ATryn, an anticoagulant used to reduce blood clots during surgery or childbirth. It
is extracted from the goat's milk

2. Banana vaccines
People may soon be getting vaccinated for diseases like hepatitis B and cholera by simply taking
a bite of banana. Researchers have successfully engineered bananas, potatoes, lettuce, carrots
and tobacco to produce vaccines, but they say bananas are the ideal production and delivery
vehicle. When an altered form of a virus is injected into a banana sapling, the virus’ genetic
material quickly becomes a permanent part of the plant’s cells. As the plant grows, its cells
produce the virus proteins — but not the infectious part of the virus. When people eat a bite of
a genetically engineered banana, which is full of virus proteins, their immune systems build up
antibodies to fight the disease — just like a traditional vaccine.

3. Scientists at the University of Washington are engineering poplar trees that can clean up
contamination sites by absorbing groundwater pollutants through their roots. The plants
then break the pollutants down into harmless byproducts that are incorporated into their
roots, stems and leaves or released into the air. In laboratory tests, the transgenic plants
are able to remove as much as 91 percent of trichloroethylene — the most common
groundwater contaminant at U.S. Superfund sites — out of a liquid solution. Regular poplar
plants removed just 3 percent of the contaminant.

4. The Enviropig, or “Frankenswine,” as critics call it, is a pig that’s been genetically altered to
better digest and process phosphorus. Pig manure is high in phytate, a form of phosphorus,
so when farmers use the manure as fertilizer, the chemical enters the watershed and causes
algae blooms that deplete oxygen in the water and kill marine life. So scientists added an E.
Coli bacteria and mouse DNA to a pig embryo. This modification decreases a pig’s
phosphorous output by as much as 70 percent — making the pig more environmentally
friendly.

5. Monsanto also produces seeds which grow into plants genetically engineered to be tolerant
to glyphosate, which are known as Roundup Ready crops. The genes contained in these
seeds are patented. Such crops allow farmers to use glyphosate as a post-emergence
herbicide against most broadleaf and cereal weeds. Soy was the first Roundup Ready crop,
and was produced at Monsanto's Agracetus Campus located in Middleton, Wisconsin.

6. The success of the agricultural world is heavily dependent on the weather. Cold weather
conditions are directly responsible for the appearance of frost on plants and most
importantly, crops. In the United States alone, it has been estimated that frost accounts for
approximately $1 billion in crop damage each year. As P. syringae commonly inhabits plant
surfaces, its ice nucleating nature incites frost development, freezing the buds of the plant
and destroying the occurring crop. The introduction of an ice-minus strain of P. syringae to
 the surface of plants would incur competition between the strains. Should the ice-minus
strain win out, the ice nucleate provided by P. syringae would no longer be present,
lowering the level of frost development on plant surfaces at normal water freezing
temperature (0oC). Even if the ice-minus strain does not win out, the amount of ice nucleate
present from ice-plus P. syringae would be reduced due to competition. Decreased levels of
frost generation at normal water freezing temperature would translate into a lowered
quantity of crops lost due to frost damage, rendering higher crop yields overall.

7. What is StarLink corn?

StarLink corn is one of several kinds of Bt corn that have been genetically engineered to
produce insecticide within the plant itself so that external applications of pesticides to fields
can be reduced or eliminated. While other Bt corns on the market in 1999 and 2000
produced a Bt toxin called Cry1A(b), StarLink had Cry9C, a slightly different version of the
protein.

In tests required for government approval to grow the crop, the Cry9C protein had been slower
to break down under artificial digestibility tests than Cry1A(b) and had raised the suspicions of
EPA reviewers by exhibiting several other characteristics of allergens. Because the issue of
Cry9C allergenicity was unresolved, the EPA granted permission to grow the crop as long as it
was not used for human food. Since the majority of the corn harvest in the United States is
used for animal feed and the production of fuel alcohol, this restriction did not spell the end of
the line for StarLink corn as a crop. Farmers would simply have to ensure that their StarLink
harvest was directed into channels that didn't lead to the human food supply.

Globally, in 2007, more than 12 million farmers grew GM foods on 114 million ha of farmland,
producing $6.9 billion worth of crops.

SOURCE:
https://windward.hawaii.edu/facstaff/...m/BIOL%20100%20PPT/019%20GMO