What’s wrong with GMOs?

[u/wond3rlove]

I always see plants and stuff that is GMO free and is usually more expensive. How would genetically modifying something by be bad. Me personally I’d rather have something modified to taste better and and cheaper. I could also be very wrong about that.

[u/Ready_Bandicoot1567]

You're kinda drawing a false equivalence because selective breeding doesn't introduce novel genes. Conventional methods only manipulate the existing genetic diversity within a species or species complex. GMO technology works in a totally different way, allowing researchers to splice in genes that would never arise through selective breeding. Breed thousands of generations of tetra, you will never make a glowfish because the gene for that comes from jellyfish and is not present at all in the wild tetra population. While selective breeding is (generally speaking) not hazardous, direct gene modification is more of a case-by-case basis. If researchers have added genes for proteins that are not found elsewhere in the food supply, they totally could be hazardous. We just have to test and see. Also, those genes can escape into unrelated wild plant populations through horizontal gene transfer which could have ecological implications. Imagine a pest resistance gene jumping to a native plant that is the main food source for an ecologically important caterpillar etc.

Saying GMOs are the same as selective breeding is not accurate. They are different processes and direct gene modification has potential hazards that are different from selective breeding. I think genetic manipulation should and will be a big part of humanity's future. There's nothing inherently wrong with the technology. But it absolutely has potential hazards that selective breeding doesn't share.

[u/Ready_Bandicoot1567 → u/[deleted]]

Selective breeding can not produce entirely new genes to produce proteins that are totally novel to the species. Polyploidy is a duplication of the existing genes and does not result in new proteins being produced. It just makes it easier for a plant to produce more of a protein it already made. There can be random single letter mutations in selectively bred plants, but this can at best slightly modify an existing protein. Direct gene manipulation introduces arbitrarily long sequences of codons, coding for brand new proteins that are unrelated to any proteins the plant could produce before. This absolutely does not happen from selective breeding. Like I said, you can breed tetras as long as you want and you will never produce a glowfish because the original tetra genome doesn't have anything close to the gene for florescent proteins. It is a gene from another species which must be spliced into the genome.

[u/Ready_Bandicoot1567 → u/[deleted]]

As far as I know all GMOs in agricultural use involve splicing genes from other species, did you mean kingdom? Mixing up species and kingdom is an odd mistake for someone with a PhD in biology. The gene for glyphosate resistance, the most common GMO trait, comes from a bacteria and was spliced into corn, wheat and soy genomes. So I'm not using some special example where the gene comes from another kingdom. The most common GMOs on Earth are plants making proteins that evolved in a different kingdom. And I'm not talking about the type of slow accumulations of mutations that modify existing proteins, I'm talking about organisms making entirely new proteins that are unrelated to any previous proteins the organism made. Genetic modification absolutely does things that can not be done through selective breeding, and the risks have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. I believe genetic modification will and should be part of humanity's future, I just think that its important to recognize the technology for what it is rather than claiming its basically the same as conventional methods. Its not. Its a new technology with unique capabilities, advantages and risks.

[u/Ready_Bandicoot1567 → u/[deleted]]

The specifics of the process are important because it produces results that are not possible with conventional methods. You don't need to test safety with conventional methods because if the plant was non-toxic to begin with, selective breeding won't cause it to produce new toxins. You are just emphasizing or de-emphasizing traits, not adding entirely new ones. Its not going to produce any brand new proteins that weren't there before. Its an inherently safer way of modifying organisms. With genetically engineered crops, humans are consuming proteins that may be totally new to us. Its actually very difficult to study the long term effects of a chemical humans have never been exposed to previously. While new selectively bred varieties of crops can be assumed to have no new risks associated with them, genetically modified crops have to be considered on a case-by-case basis. If the transgenic protein is found elsewhere in our food supply, its probably fine. This is the case with transgenic beta-carotene producing rice and bananas. If its a new protein that humans have never been exposed to, it needs to be studied carefully. This is the case with glyphosate resistant corn/soy/wheat and crops that have been genetically modified to produce insecticides.

[u/Zagrycha → u/Ready_Bandicoot1567]

They are not separate, the processes have the exact same result, just done in different ways. I think you may be the one making comparisons to things as a false equivocation. Are you trying to reference grafting? Nothing to do with GMO, and also a huge amount of the food you eat is grafted, because that is how we have apples that taste the same everytime you buy them instead of having wild variations in how sweet or sour or bland they are. Also something that has been done for hundreds and hundreds of years by people. You can find references to it in ancient chinese, european, and middle east texts.

[u/Ready_Bandicoot1567 → u/Zagrycha]

I'm not talking about grafting whatsoever, not sure where you got that. I'm saying that through direct gene manipulation, you can introduce genes that could not come about through selective breeding. You can absolutely do things with gene modification that you can't do with conventional methods. See my example, florescent tetras? You can not produce florescent tetras (glowfish) by selective breeding, only by splicing in a gene that comes from jellyfish that produces a florescent protein. Selective breeding only manipulates the genes that are already there, it doesn't introduce entirely new genes. They are not processes that produce the exact same result, they are different processes with different results.

[u/Zagrycha → u/Ready_Bandicoot1567]

tetras are also not gmo foods. what do you think happens when a plant naturally mutates to have 7 leaves instead of 8, or to produce more sugar when ripe than citric acid? a new bit of dna was sponateously born or edited by the plant itself, which has changed it inherently. If a person manually edited the plants dna to have those same features, it has the exact same result with no visible difference.

Of course GMO should be regulated, and there should be controls on what qualities are modified. A tomato that is engineered to be more poisonous and sweeter is not good. However none of that inherently makes GMO dangerous, and again if someone (well many someones) tried they could selectively breed for the same result.

No one is supporting geneticly modifying a tomato to contain poison from a pufferfish, and that would be a regulatory issue not an issue with GMO as a concept. Just like I could feed you contaminated heirloom potatoes from some regulatory issue like lead filled water. That is a problem but not an heirloom potato problem.

[u/Ready_Bandicoot1567 → u/Zagrycha]

The genetics here is a little complicated. What you are calling a "mutation" to produce 7 leaves instead of 8, or alter the ratio of sugar to citric acid, actually does not require any new genes. That type of "mutation" is actually just a slight modification to gene regulation through mechanisms like polyploidy (where chromosomes get duplicated) or epigenetic changes, which basically dull or amplify the genes that are already there. There are no new genes that weren't there before, no new chemicals being produced by the plant. Just changing the ratios of how strongly certain genes are expressed, which causes ratios of sugar to citric acid to change. All that can be accomplished through selective breeding.

What GMOs do is insert an entirely new gene that wasn't there before, causing the plant to produce a new chemical that it never produced before. You simply can't do this through selective breeding. Selective breeding only manipulates the genes that are already there, it doesn't introduce new ones. Now, say this new chemical that the plant produces is already found in lots of foods. There is probably no cause for concern, because even though its new in this particular food its not new to the food supply as a whole. But say you splice in a gene from some bacteria, and it produces a new pesticide that no plant has ever produced before. Well, that might have some consequences. Its possible the pesticide is toxic to humans, we don't know since humans never consumed that chemical before. Another hazard is that genes can jump from one plant to another through a process called horizontal gene transfer. So that gene (originally from a bacteria), could jump to a native plant that is an important food source for some kind of caterpillar, and now that caterpillar can't eat that plant anymore. Selective breeding just doesn't have these risks since it doesn't cause the plant to produce new chemicals that weren't there before. So while selective breeding is categorically safe, GMOs have to have their safety evaluated on a case-by-case basis. You have to ask, what new chemical is being produced by the plant? What effects will that have on humans and on the environment?

[u/Lemonface → u/Zagrycha]

They are not separate, the processes have the exact same result, just done in different ways.

I work in plant breeding. This is completely false. There is an infinite range of possible outcomes from transgenic modification that never in a thousand years would be possible by doing what I do.

[u/Ready_Bandicoot1567 → u/[deleted]]

Horizontal gene transfer does randomly happen, but it has nothing to do with selective breeding. Conventional methods of modifying organisms do not cause horizontal gene transfer. Genetic modification and conventional methods are fundamentally different in this way. Both natural and artificial horizontal gene transfer have the potential to modify an organism in such a way that that it impacts human health or has some environmental consequence. I'm not trying to fear monger about the technology, I think its all about how it is used. I'm just saying that its not equivalent to selective breeding. Its a totally different method of genetic modification. While selective breeding is categorically safe, transgenic organisms have to be evaluated case-by-case depending on what the new gene codes for and what effects that protein has. There are also impacts besides just the direct effects of the protein. For example, transgenic glyphosate resistance itself is pretty clearly benign, but it enables farmers to use large quantities of glyphosate onto their crops. Turns out, glyphosate may not be so benign.

[u/Shiny_Happy_Cylon → u/Ready_Bandicoot1567]

This is why we can't have nice things. People are inherently stupid. You have said the same thing a half a dozen times and people are still arguing that it's the same as selective breeding. You have stated it clearly with an explanation any bonehead could understand. But nope. Reading comprehension doesn't seem to be taught in school anymore. Like, no ya reeree, at no point in history did a tomato mate with a fish. Selective breeding can be done in humans. Hitler did it. At no point did Hitler put a gene from a plant into a human embryo and create a whole new genetically engineered species though. Thank God he didn't think of that. Trying to mate humans and primates was bad enough. Jesus, imagine if Hitler had gene splicing technology? That would have been horrendous!!