Lindsey Buckley

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Group 7 Lindsey Buckley Kyle Kienitz Eric Ron
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INTRODUCTION

• What GM foods are
• Advantages and Criticisms
• How it's done
• Common Crops
• Conclusion

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What are GM foods?

• Crop plants created for human or animal
  consumption
• Created using molecular biology techniques
• Created with exact desired trait rapidly and
  accurately

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Advantages of GM Foods

• Pest Resistant
• Eliminate chemical pesticides
• Reduce costs

• Herbicide Tolerance
• GM soybeans resistant to Roundup

• Disease Resistant
• Resist fungi and bacteria viruses

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Advantages of GM Foods

• Cold Tolerance
• Antifreeze gene found in cold water fish
• Drought Tolerance
• Withstand periods of drought or high salt
• Nutrition
• Benefit for third world countries

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Advantages of GM Foods

• Pharmaceuticals
• Plants injected with edible vaccines
• Phytoremediation
• Genetically modified soil and groundwater

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Criticisms of GM foods

• Environmental activists, religious groups,
  public interest groups
• Ethical Issue
• playing God or unnatural
• Wrong to mix genes from different organisms
• Luxury for the rich, not the poor

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Criticisms of GM foods

• Environmental hazards
• Unintended harm to other organisms
• Reduced effectiveness of pesticides
• Gene transfer to non-target species
• Human health risks
• Create new allergies
• Unknown effects

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Golden Rice

• An example of how microbiology and biotechnology
  is being used in the food industry

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Golden Rice

• A humanitarian effort (began in 1992)
• Vitamin A deficiency

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Golden Rice

• Beta Carotene in the rice plant
• Scientists had to find a way to get the B
  Carotene into the endosperm

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Golden Rice

• Rebuilding the biosynthetic pathway
• External genes that ultimately synthesize alpha
  and beta carotene
• Psy (phytoene synthase)
• Crt1 from a soil bacterium

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Golden Rice

• Incorporate the psy and crt1 genes into the
  plant cell using transformation
• These genes produce the needed enzyme to
  complete the synthesis of alpha and beta
  carotene.

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Golden Rice

• The Golden Rice project is based off of free
  licenses by the companies who own the
  intellectual property rights to research
• Opposition still exists arguing that solutions
  like this look at the small issues and not larger
  social and political problems

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Food and Health

• Functional foods- foods that provide health
  benefits beyond basic nutrition
• Bioactive components of functional foods may be
  increased or added to traditional foods through
  genetic engineering techniques.

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Functional Foods

• improved fatty acid
• improved protein content
• Increased vitamin and mineral levels
• reduction in anti-nutritional substances

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Fatty Acids

• hormone-like substances that regulate
• blood pressure
• blood clotting
• blood lipid levels
• the immune response

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Biotech Application

• Canola Oil
• Calgene
• -first demonstration of the incorporation of a
  biologically potent source of long-chain omega-3
  fatty acids, into edible plants

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Food Allergies

• abnormal response to a food triggered by the
  immune system.
• anaphylaxis

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Biotech solutionsSoybeans

• P34
• USDA and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
• -Gene silencing
• Careful plant breeding with the genetically
  modified soybeans may be able to produce the
  hypoallergenic soybeans.

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Biotech SolutionsPeanut

• Ar h1, Ar h2, and Ar h3
• Recombinant versions of the protein Ar h2 were
  heat treated and used in a vaccine on mice

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Negative Biotech

• the transfer of a known allergen may occur from a
  crop into a non-allergenic target crop
• the creation of a new allergen where de novo
  sensitization occurs in the population

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Work Cited

• Clinical risk assessment of GM foods.PreviewBy
  Lack, Gideon. Toxicology Letters, Feb2002, Vol.
  127 Issue 1-3, p337, 4p (AN 7817380)
• Food Allergies When Food Becomes the EnemyFDA
  Consumer magazine_July-August 2001 Issue Ray
  Formanek Jr.
• Application of Biotechnology for Functional
  Foods. 2007 Pew Initiative on Food and
  Biotechnology.
• Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops
  2004 Clive James
• The Science Behind Golden Rice. 2007. Golden Rice
  Humanitarian Board. 27 March 2009
  lthttp//www.goldenrice.org/Content2-How/how1_sci.h
  tmlgt