Genetic_Modification_of_Foodstuffs

Genetic Modification of Foodstuffs Genetic Modification of Foodstuffs Virtually every crop we eat have undergone hundreds of years of genetic modification by farmers and scientist in search of desirable traits. Selective breeding and hybrid strains have contributed immeasurably to farm productivity during this time. Over the past 30 years however, genetic engineering has been revolutionized. While before, a farmer wanting to develop a frost resistant tomato would be able to breed towards one only if the necessary genes were available somewhere in tomatoes or a near relative to tomatoes, modern biological engineering techniques overcome such restrictions. Genetic traits from outside a species’ gene pool, in the tomato’s case from an arctic fish, can be spliced into the organism to create an entirely different species, a transgenic organism with the typical traits of a tomato and frost resistance from a fish. The most widely used method of gene splicing, recombinant DNA, uses biochemical "scissors" called restriction enzymes to cut the strings of DNA, selecting required genes. These are then “ferried” by a virus or a bacterium that infects the host, smuggling the gene into the plant's DNA. In this way scientists have been able to create slow ripening and seedless fruit, crops that grow in unfavourable gene, crops, genetically, dna, been, gm, genetic, food, soybeans, resistant, recombinant, modified, genes, engineered, create, years, traits, species, rice, resistance, reaction, possibility, plants, organisms, one, human, herbicide, engineering, weeds, vitamin, transgenic, transfer, tomatoes, tomato, terms, strain, scientists, required, reducing, production, produce, pesticides, organism, nuts, non-target, natural, modification, insects, however, herbicides, health