A homemade, high potential benefit-driven development from the public sector
Beans are an important food item, mostly in the developing world. Unfortunately, the golden mosaic virus infection is a serious constraint causing severe grain losses in Brazil and South America. The National Technical Commission on Biosafety (CTNBio) approved the genetically modified golden mosaic virus-resistant beans developed by the Brazilian public Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) linked to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply. This work is an example of a public-sector effort to develop useful traits, such as resistance to a devastating disease, in an “orphan crop” cultivated by poor farmers throughout Latin America. It is a milestone as it is the first fully “publicly funded homemade” recombinant biotechnology crop improvement strategy that has reached this stage in a developing country.
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Cotton like Candy
Or Cottonseed you can Eat thanks to Genetic Engineering.
A few years ago, I read about a research group that had used genetic engineering to remove a poisonous compound from cotton seed. Now, it seems, they are one step closer to making a positive impact on the availability of food for people in developing countries and beyond. Time Magazine reports that Dr. Keerti Rathore and his team, who made the development years ago have now moved on to field trials, a necessary step to test the resilience and effectiveness of the trait in real-world conditions.
RNA that Interferes
Let me tell you how this works. They used a technique called RNA interference, or RNAi. When plants (and other organisms we are finding) are infected with a virus that uses RNA as its genetic material, they defend themselves by chopping up the offending molecule. Cells use the double-stranded DNA as genetic material, and use the very similar single-stranded RNA to carry information from the genes to the rest of the cell for making proteins. But the RNA that these viruses use is double-stranded, like DNA. Since plants don’t use RNA as a double-strand, this gives them something different to detect and destroy, and that’s what they do.
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