The Pros And Cons Of Genome Editinging

Recent developments in genome editing increased the scope of possibilities of genome editing; every part of the genome can efficiently, quickly and cheaply be altered. This potential increase in scope might have implications for the ethical issues related to genetic modified organisms (Newson and Wringley, 2015). Factually, genome-edited plants are GMOs, but they vary from cultivated GMO crops. The later have transgenes introduced from other organisms as well as species. By contrast, genome editing technology allows precise mutation of a specific endogenous gene, the alteration of current allele to a more favorable one, or the particular insertion of an identified variant into other breeds. In traditional breeding techniques, these modifications could be created naturally in some cases, so it could be done in a different way by genome editing.

Agricultural crops have been genetically enhanced to face pests, diseases, climate change and be more productive as well. For genome editing by SSN technologies genome modifications can be made without insertion of transgenes, which makes it different form other transformation techniques. Although insertion of transgenes at a targeted location in the genome is possible by using SSN. In the USA, various reviewers have consequently called for modifications in the GM plants regulation because genome-edited organisms would no longer be categorized as transgenic organisms. In contrast, European Union (EU) regulation now considers all GM crops as transgenic, whether this includes genome editing or the insertion of foreign DNA and therefore subject to risk assessment and it’s regulation. However, there is a debate on whether considering genome-edited plants without inserted DNA sequence should not be subjected to the same risk assessment and regulatory regime as transgenics (Arthur et al.,