The Pros And Cons Of GM Rice

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Another form of modified rice was generated to help combat iron deficiency, which impacts close to 30 percent of the world population. This GM crop was engineered by introducing into the rice genome a ferritin gene from the common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris, that produces a protein capable of binding iron, as well as a gene from the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus that produces an enzyme capable of digesting compounds that increase iron bioavailability via digestion of phytate (an inhibitor of iron absorption). The iron-fortified GM rice was engineered to overexpress an existing rice gene that produces a cysteine-rich metallothioneinlike (metal-binding) protein that enhances iron absorption.

A variety of other crops modified to endure the weather

The first full-size native human recombinant PDP, human serum albumin, was demonstrated in 1990, and since then antibodies, blood products, hormones and vaccines have all been expressed in plants.

Using GM plants as a platform for producing pharmaceuticals has many potential advantages over traditional systems. For example, GM plants can produce complex multimeric proteins such as antibodies that cannot be readily expressed by microbial systems.

Currently, over three million people die every year from vaccine-preventable diseases, the vast majority in the developing world. The current model of profit-motivated pharmaceutical production by companies in the developed world is ineffective in ridding the developing world of disease. GM plant technology may provide an alternative, as it is relatively low-tech and can be applied locally in the developing world by scientists working in partnership with governments and not-for-profit research funding

Controls are necessary to avoid false positive or false negative results.

Joana et al. (2010) reported the extraction and detection of DNA along with a complete industrial soybean oil processing chain to monitor the presence of Roundup Ready (RR) soybean. The amplification of soybean lectin gene by end-point polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was achieved in all the steps of extraction and refining processes. The real-time PCR assays using specific probes confirmed all the results and proved that it is possible to detect and quantify GMOs in the fully refined soybean oil.

Figure 1 gives the overall protocol for the testing of GMOs. This is based on a PCR detection system specific for 35S promoter region originating from cauliflower mosaic virus (Deisingh and Badrie 2005). The development of quantitative detection systems such as quantitative competitive PCR (QC-PCR), real-time PCR and ELISA systems resulted in the advantage of survival of DNA in most manufacturing processes. Otherwise with ELISA, there can be protein denaturing during food processing. Inter-laboratory differences were found to be less with the QC-PCR than with quantitative PCR probably due to insufficient homogenisation of the sample. However, there are disadvantages, the major one being the amount of DNA, which could be amplified, is affected by food processing techniques and can vary up