[TheForge] OT: GM foods OT:

[dann at wctatel.net]

I cannot understand why people fear GMO grains.

GMO foods are plant gene groups that were shifted from one kind of plant
into another, using a plant virus as the vector. When the jump has been
made, it is back to plain old cross breeding and hybrization to produce a
plant that has commercially viable grain yields.

The nuts and bolts of GM foods is basically good old fashioned, old school
plant genetics. Yes the modifications are now done in a lab, but the
mechanics are all biological processes that happen in nature.

Scientists search out a living plant with the desired genes, expose that
plant to a plant virus.  The plant virus does what all virus do when they
reproduce.  They randomly cut into and insert themselves into the plants
DNA, when they reproduce,they cut back out, but drag parts of the plant's
DNA with the virus' DNA.  Then the scientist  expose that carrier virus to
the desired plant species, in hopes that if they do it enough times,  the
virus will move the right sequence of genes from the initial cultured
plant into the new plant culture.  It can take thousands of cell cultures
... to finally get the right genes to jump.

Case in point.
Monsanto had a herbicide : Roundup that when applied at the rate of one
quart to an acre, on a young growing plant,  pretty much killed all
plants. Not quite like a liquid frost, but the idea is there.

They wanted a soybean that would be immune to moderate rates of Roundup. 
They used soybean cell cultures.. thousands and thousands of petri dishes
that they applied diluted herbicides.. until they got some soybean cell
cultures that survived.  Then they grew these round up resistant  cell
cultures into  mature plants, and cross bred the round up resistance into
better yielding varieties.

Roundup Ready Soybeans were not GMO:  they were developed using  a
modified process of natural selection. But one of the first GMO sucess
stories was when the Soybean genes from the Roundup resistent gene package
was shifted from the soybean plant to other species of plants like Corn
using plant virus.  Once they got roundup resistent gene package shifted
to the corn, the next task was simply old fashioned cross breeding  to get
the Round UP Ready Corn  yields to production yield standerds.

At least that is how I remember my Genetics professor explaining what was
being attempted 40 years ago.

Dann