Tag Archives: Technology

Gene Editing’s Extra DNA Problem: Déjà Vu All Over Again

UC Davis researcher Alison Van Eenennaam described the experience of learning that the “poster animals for the gene-editing revolution” do not, after all, comprise the “same outcome [that] could be achieved by breeding in the farmyard,” like she and her collaborators … Continue reading

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U.S. Grain Industry Believes USDA APHIS’s “New Proposed Rule [for regulating GMOs] Is Fundamentally Flawed”

I’ve got to give credit to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) for persistence. USDA APHIS has proposed new rules for regulating genetically engineered (GE) crop plants (AKA genetically modified organisms: GMOs) … Continue reading

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Disappointment in the First 25 Years of GMO Foods

The world’s first, commercially available GMO (genetically modified organism) created for human or animal food was first sold in U.S. grocery stores twenty-five years ago today. I can still remember the excitement my colleagues and I at Calgene, Inc. felt as … Continue reading

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New Salk Institute Study Reveals More Detailed Picture of “Scrambled Nature” of Gene Insertions in GMOs

Plant molecular biologists have known for decades that the techniques they use to genetically engineer plants are error prone and can result in GMOs with unintended: mutations in host plant genes, insertion of vector backbone DNA sequences, small duplications or … Continue reading

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Golden Rice: Of Good Intentions, Insertional Mutants, Human Error, and the Need for Better Regulation of GMOs

After learning that the genetically engineered (GE) Golden Rice “event” being bred into varieties of rice favored by Indian farmers turned out to have a mutation—a mutation created as a result of the genetic engineering process itself (you can check … Continue reading

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Transparent Information about the GMO Ingredient(s) in the “Impossible Burger”

Have you heard about this new non-meat burger that—due to an ingredient produced in a genetically engineered (GE) yeast—has a taste and “blood” like what you would expect from the real thing? Or, since they are already commercially available for … Continue reading

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Genetic Engineering is Very Different Than Traditional Breeding

The United States National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have established a committee to study the “economic, agronomic, health, safety, or other impacts of genetically engineered (GE) crops and food.” The committee’s results may be used to reassess the … Continue reading

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