What are gmos?

Gmos are living beings genetically manipulated in the laboratory in order to incorporate a DNA sequence (acid desoxirribonucleíco) or molecule responsible for inheritance of a different kind, with the purpose of transmitting desirable characteristics from one to another. For example, a gene (DNA sequence that codes for a characteristic) of a bacterium (such as resistance to insects) introduced into a plant. Most of the transgenic crops (soybean, corn, rice, and cotton among the most frequent) are developed to be resistant against the herbicide glyphosate, and also against pests individuals. The main argument to use the gm is able to produce in a way, each time more intense in monocultures that hypothetically require less manpower, and controlling the production process through to remove all the other plants, insects, fungi, and microorganisms. Apply the herbicide glyphosate and the idea is that you die all the so-called “weeds” and so there is no worry of that “steal” nutrients from the main plant, without taking into account issues with overuse of water and destruction of biodiversity. 

If you have already changed the DNA of the plant, the next step is to patent it, a gene patented shall, during the next few decades, the property of the company, although in a crop where the farmer has not sown the seeds are patented. As in the case of maize, open-pollinated, where genes are mixed with any other corn within a radius of miles.

It turns out that all gmos are genetically modified organisms (GMOS), but not all GMOS are genetically modified. When in a transgenic transferred the gene, there are now generations of GMOS where you can enter the gene and change it directly with the so-called editing genetics. That is to say that GMOS are a generic name that includes the transgenic and other agencies, regardless of the technique of molecular biology and the origin of the portion of DNA that has been modified.

On the other hand, genetically modified seeds (and hence the transgenic) differ from hybrids because the latter are a result of the selection of the stems of plants with desirable characteristics (for example, the large size of the fruit), but this selection of genes are those that appear naturally in populations of plants and not imported from organisms of other species, as is the case with the gm. It is worth mentioning that both the transgenic seeds as the hybrid are patented by transnational corporations, only that the transgenic in addition to the issues of intellectual property involving more disadvantages and environmental health that the hybrid. 

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Risks to agriculture

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Risk culture

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Health risks

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Risks to the environment

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The biotech moderna

Transgenic seeds are the product of the application of the developments of modern biotechnology, whose foundations were laid in the mid-TWENTIETH century, with the discoveries of molecular biology with regard to the molecular structure of DNA. During the second half of the TWENTIETH century developed other techniques of genetic engineering to the manipulation of the genetic material of living organisms, increasingly moving away from traditional biotechnology executed by the peasant communities from the origins of agriculture in the Neolithic period.

In that sense, while traditional biotechnology respects the processes that occur in nature, the biotechnology moderna makes technological interventions that do not happen in a natural way. This sets off the problematization about their effects, based on the uncertainty that it causes, among other things, the breakup of the basic postulate of evolution: the genetic differentiation of the species, which poses its existence in virtue of their reproductive barriers.

In the last few decades, with the development of the tecnociencias and their convergence, the biotech moderna has raised new forms of modification of the genome through the editing genetics, the industry that develops and applies the presents as more accurate, but which has not been shown how to control your side effects.

Freedom Castro-Hill