GM is not new: Frankenplants and Frankenfoods

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It always amuses me when people tell me that they only eat natural foods. There is very little in our food that is natural. Just take a look at a corn plant. It is a monster, a real Frankenplant. It has a single stalk and usually one but no more than two seed heads that we call cobs. But it is a grass. How many grasses have you seen like that? It was many years before they could decide what the wild relative or “natural” corn was. At last, they tried a plant called teosinte and they found it could crossbreed with corn to produce a plant somewhere in between corn and teosinte. Corn has giant cobs with around 450 seeds (kernels) whereas teosinte has a seed head with just 18.

But that is not the only change; the seeds of teosinte have a hard seed coat to protect them so that one has to pound them hard before they can be used. In contrast, the seeds on the corn cob have much thinner coats making them easier to eat or convert into flour. Most importantly for the plant, the seeds of teosinte are released from the cob when they are ripe, a process called shattering. The seeds can then be spread around to propagate more teosinte plants the following year. In corn, the seeds stick tightly to the cob and have to be scraped or chewed off. If you did not harvest a corn field, the cobs would eventually fall to the ground and 450 plants would try to grow in one place. That and the fragile nature of the seeds would be a disaster for them. In a couple of years, there would be no more corn and the wild plants would have taken their place. The corn plant is indeed a Frankenplant, created by its human masters and totally reliant on us for its survival.

It is not just corn that we have modified to serve us better. All the plants we eat have been extensively changed for our needs. Cabbages, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower are all varieties of a single plant species Brassica oleracea. The wild tomato plant has little red berries which are unpleasant tasting and probably toxic. It is, after all, a member of the deadly nightshade family of plants, some of which are very toxic. The wild tomato is a far cry from the one pound monster beefsteak tomatoes that I can grow in my garden.

It is not just plants we have changed so they can no longer be called natural. Animals also have been changed. Consider a toy poodle, which is nothing more than a genetically modified grey wolf, as is the very docile golden retriever sitting at my feet. Neither of these pets would survive long in the wild, competing with their fierce relatives. Consider the dairy cow. A good milk cow can produce at least 20,000 pounds of milk each year. A commercial hen lays at least 300 eggs in a year, especially if it is kept in a barn with artificial light. We have also developed specialty breeds of animals to provide us with meat. All these animals are a far cry from their wild relatives. With both plants and animals we have changed their genes to achieve our goals.
We hear a great deal about the “genetic modification” of crop plants, as if this was something new. It isn’t. Humans have been genetically modifying plants and animals since we first settled into stable communities about 10,000 years ago.

Ah, you might say, but that genetic modification is natural and not like the recent modifications of plants that were performed in a lab. It isn’t natural. All living organisms, including ourselves, continuously have our DNA modified by such things as natural radiation. Almost all of these “natural” genetic changes are harmful and in the wild the individuals carrying them are removed by competition. What we have done is to isolate plants and animals that are useful to us and allow them to survive by eliminating completion from their wild relatives. We have produced dramatically changed plants and animals by constantly selecting for the characteristics that we want. This transformation was accomplished before we knew the structure of DNA and before its function had been discovered and, of course, long before biotechnology was invented.

“We hear a great deal about the “genetic modification” of crop plants, as if this was something new. It isn’t…”

Until about the middle of the twentieth century, we relied on natural radiation to provide the variation we needed as the starting point for developing new varieties. At that time, the supply of genetic mutants in crop plants was dramatically increased by treated them with artificial radiation or chemical mutagens instead of waiting for natural mutations to occur. This approach is very effective and has led to the development of new high yielding varieties that has allowed the human population to increase from 1.5 billion at the beginning of the century to 6 billion at the end with less malnutrition at the end than at the beginning.

The technology has, however, its problems. For example, corn has 50,000 genes (twice our number) and in order to change a single gene it is necessary to generate a very large number of mutants so that, although we might find plants with the desired characteristic, many other genes will have been changed as well. In other words, the genome has been seriously damaged. To remove the unwanted damage, the mutants are repeated crossed back to the original line until they have their parent’s good properties while retaining the new altered gene. Using these techniques, corn yield in the USA rose from 30 to 200 bushels per acre in the 70 years between the 1930 and 2000.

Instead of this shotgun approach of changing many genes, would it not be better to target a single gene and modify it. This has become possible now we know the structure of DNA and can manipulate the genes it contains (the subject of another blog)…

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