Introduction:
From the beginning of agriculture, people have been trying to produce more food with less effort. There has been domestication, intensive agriculture, and irrigation techniques that have evolved to help humans to use their resources as efficiently as possible; but now people are developing a new way to maximize their crop output. That technique is the genetically modified organism. A genetically modified organism is an organism that has genetic material that has been modified in such a way that it cannot occur in nature by mating or recombination. These genetically modified organisms, most of which are crops, can be modified with 5 steps. First, a desirable trait must be chosen for a plant one wishes to alter. Then the gene must be cloned; next it must be engineered. Then the gene must be transformed into the plant. Finally, the GM plant must be backcrossed into a high yield crop. It may sound like a very efficient method that should be used all of the time, but it is important to remember that with every new technique, there is going to be controversy about whether or not it is necessary and/or useful. On the side against GMOs, there are valid concerns. The GMOs impact the creation of super pests and super weeds that are nearly impossible to exterminate. There would be a loss of biodiversity if all organisms are altered in the same way. If there was a selective pressure against these GMO crops in the future, the human race could be digging itself into a huge hole. Others may be concerned with the biotechnology companies controlling agriculture, or even the health implications as the GMO crops are new and it is not certain how they could affect people. On the other hand, if GMOs are created they could solve some of the major problems plaguing the human race. GMOs could bring higher crop yields to feed the growing human population. More crops could also be grown on less farmland. This would account for the loss of farmable land. GMOs may also be able to help with soil remediation to help retrieve some of this lost land, and in addition to helping the soil, the individual crops can be altered to have an increased nutritional value which will impact the people eating the crops as well.
Regardless of the various controversies, today there is a growing demand for GMOs in the market. More and more companies are swapping to GMO crops; however, there are no markings for these crops in most cases, but there still is a way to determine whether or not a crop is genetically modified. This is done in a laboratory setting, where first the food in question is grinded. Then the DNA is extracted and tested by PCR with plant primers and GMO primers. This will help to determine for one, whether the extracted DNA was of a plant, and also whether the plant was indeed a GMO. To further explain, the plant gene being amplified is a highly conserved chloroplast gene from Photosystem II, which is involved in the light reaction of photosynthesis. Clearly such an important gene would have been selected for among most or even all plants, which is why it is an excellent candidate for testing for. There are two GMO genes that are being amplified as well. The first one, CaMV 35S, is the sequence for the promoter of the 35S transcript of the cauliflower mosaic virus. This virus is tested for because it is messes with the circuitry of the cell and is able to make the cell amplify whatever foreign gene is next to it. Genetic engineers use this to amplify their introduced genes, but it comes with a price. The host organism is put under metabolic stress which could lead to the instability of a GMO (Ho, n.d.). There is another type of commonly used GMO gene that is tested for called the nopaline synthase terminator from agrobacterium temefaciens. It came into use because it evolved to be recognized in most plants. Interpreting the results from testing for these genes can only then be done with gel electrophoresis. While it may seem
