Wild plants may be able to resist herbicides.
Weedy rice can absorb transgenes derived from genetically modified rice by cross-pollinating. Credit: Xiao Yang
The use of genetic modification of crops to make them resistant to herbicides has been extensively used to produce advantages for species of rice that are weedy. ラウンドアップ This suggests that the modifications could have an impact on the natural environment beyond farms.
A variety of varieties of crops are created genetically to be resistant to the glyphosate. This herbicide, originally known as Roundup and then introduced to the market in 1996 under the tradename Roundup. ラウンドアップ 風 Farmers can eliminate the majority of the weeds that grow in their fields by using this glyphosate resistance without causing damage to their crops.
Glyphosate can inhibit plant growth by inhibiting EPSP synase which is an enzyme involved in the creation of amino acids and other chemicals which comprise around 35% of the plant’s mass. The technique of genetic modification utilized, for instance, in Roundup Ready crops made by the biotechnology giant Monsanto located in St Louis, Missouri -usually involves inserting genes into a crop’s genome to boost EPSP-synthase production. These genes usually come from bacteria that have caused the infection of the plants.
ラウンドアップ エノコログサ ラウンドアップ The extra EPSP synthase helps the plant resist the effects of glyphosate. Biotechnology laboratories are looking to utilize genes from plants rather than bacteria to increase EPSP synthase. This is due to the fact that the US law permits regulatory approval that allows organisms that have transgenes to be recognized as acceptable.
A few studies have looked into the possibility that transgenes, such as glyphosate-resistant ones are able to — when introduced to weedy or wild plants by cross-pollination — increase the competitiveness of these plants in survival, reproduction and growth. “The traditional expectation is that any sort of transgene will confer disadvantage in the wild, in the absence of pressure to select, due to the fact that any additional machinery will reduce the fitness,” says Norman Ellstrand an expert in plant genetics at the University of California in Riverside.
Lu Baorong, an ecologist from Fudan University in Shanghai has revised that opinion. He has discovered that resistance to glyphosate provides a significant fitness lift to the weedy variant of the standard rice crop Oryza sativa.
Lu and his associates modified cultivated rice varieties to produce more EPSP synthase. They also crossed the modified rice with a weedy-related. Their work was published in NewPhytologist 1.
The team then allowed offspring cross-bred to breed with one another, resulting in second-generation hybrids that were genetically identical to their parents, except for how many duplicates of the gene that codes for EPSP synthase. The researchers found that the hybrids that had more copies of the gene that encodes EPSP synthase expressed more enzymes and also produced more tryptophan, as expected.
Researchers also discovered that transgenic hybrids grew between 48-125percent more seeds per plant. ラウンドアップ They also had more photosynthesis, and had more shoots than non-transgenic ones.
Lu says that making weedy grains more competitive could cause more problems for farmers across the world whose crops are infected by the pest.
Brian Ford-Lloyd is Brian Ford-Lloyd is a UK plant geneticist who says, “If the EPSP synthase gene is introduced into wild rice species, their genetic diversity would be at risk, which is important because the genotype with transgene has a higher level of competition than the standard species.” “This is one instance of the most probable and damaging negative effects of GM crops on the environment.”
The study also challenges the notion that genetically modified plants that carry additional copies of their own genes are more secure than the ones that have the genes of microorganisms. Lu states, “Our study shows this is not necessarily true.”
Certain researchers believe that this finding requires a review of the future regulation of genetically modified crops. Ellstrand believes that some believe that biosafety regulations could be relaxed given the past two decades of genetic engineering. “But the study shows that the new technologies require careful evaluation.”