Should we Grow GM Crops?

Instructions: Read the page and click YES or NO, reach the next...click YES or NO...etc until you’ve read all the arguments -- You will need to do this 12 times in order for your votes to be tallied. Navigate the site, each of the bold headings below are links within the site


1. What is a GM Crop.

A GM crop is any food that has been modified genetically, to improve its production or solve the crops' problems.



2. List 2 arguments FOR the growing of GM crops

It will lead to the end of pesticides, which are used at a rate of 970 MILLION tons a year. Instead of spraying poison, scientists can genetically engineer resistance to bacteria and viruses that may destroy a whole harvest. Also, GM crops can be male-sterile, leading to no pollen, which incurs less allergies to people.

It can lead to the gradual end of world hunger, due to the possibly huge harvests from GM crops. Right now, 1 in 12 people are malnourished. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics feels that this possibility is enough to justify continuing research in bioengineering. If scientists can create crops that grow twice the size in half the time, then, theoretically, there could be 4 times of the capacity of agriculture.


3. List 2 arguments AGAINST the growing of GM crops.
Health risks may come up, and a new allergen may be created through engineering. It also might cause bacteria in our stomachs to somehow acquire the antibiotic gene in some GM enzymes. Also, the genes changed may take over all other natural flavors of food, because of higher sustainability of its changed species through natural selection.

The economic impact may interfere with old mom-and-pop farms, that are not able to keep up with large corporations that can afford genetic engineering departments who can better their crops. Also, it may lead to loss of culinary diversity because the small farms that create exotic foods will go out of business because they won't be able to charge a premium when other people can produce cheaper food.




*Read some of the reader’s responses.



Engineer a Crop

4. Practice this simulation until you get the largest ears of corn. How many times did it take you?

It took me once, and I had to go through 4 rounds of breeding.


What’s for Dinner?

*Click on the foods on the table to see what research is being done to bioenginner the foods.

5. List two foods and desribe how they are being modified.

Cheese is being GMed, by having rennet injected to curdle cheese quicker. Also, coffee is also being modified to not be caffeinated on the genetic level, and the post-germinated coffee will not have to go through a full decaffeination process.


Viewpoints

*Read the article titled “Are GM Food Sufficiently Regulated in the US?”

Do you think food should be labeled if it has been genetically modified? Why or Why not?

I think it should. The consumer has a right to understand any unnatural occurrences to the products they are buying. However, education should be done to tell the public that GMed products are approved by the FDA, and go through a rigorous approval process. Also, any labels applied to it should not have to be overwhelmingly large; eating GMed foods is certainly not equivalent to the huge health problems incurred by smoking, which has huge signs on its boxes telling consumers about its toxic properties.





Finished? Go to www.yahooligans.com and type "genetic engineering" in the search field. Browse some of the sites that pop up.

(Yahooligans is better than yahoo, the sites tend to be picked for education rather than for scientists and universities, you'll find more understandable and interesting sites on yahooligans than you will with Yahoo)

Write down any of the sites you visited below.

http://www.eco-pros.com/genetic_engineering.htm
http://www.foodmuseum.com/issues.html
http://www.eurekascience.com/ICanDoThat/gen_eng.htm

Epigenetics

Identical Twins:

1. The twins change over time, due to different experiences and environments that occur within the twins' life time. The epigenome conforms to these changes with epigenetic tags that can turn a gene on or off.

2. Environmental factors

Stress, diet, exercise, and release of toxins all can change the epigenome.

3. What is an imprinted gene?

An imprinted gene is a gene that does not have its epigenetic tags wiped out during "cleansing", the process in which an embryo loses most of its parents' epigenetic tags.

Your Environment, Your Epigenome:

I certainly think my diet will certainly change my future life, and my strong disliking of toxins will also contribute. My diet has been quite balanced, however, I have not been eating as healthily when I am stressed. Also, I hope I never try drugs because of their high one-time damage. However, the true dent caused by them are because of addiction, where you will never be able to rectify your epigenome.

LICK YOUR RATS

When a rat is newborn, its mother can change its future behavior forever. The change is through the simple process of grooming and licking a rat. The more licked a rat is, the more calm and relaxed it is in adulthood, and it will reciprocate the licking to younger rats. This licking activates the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), which helps reduce the response to high stress. In the hippocampus, highly-licked rats will send out a calming signal during "Flight or Fight", through the bonding of the hormone cortisol and the GR protein.

This mechanism also applies to humans. When humans are well cared for during childhood, they develop less angst and are less likely to have diabetes and heart disease. Kids who aren't usually become socially low-standing and disliked. However, too much care in humans can also shut children off from the real world which isn't as rosy as it is supposed to be. So-called "helicopter" parents and over-nurturing parents may develop a need to be carefully nurtured, which may hurt self-reliance in adulthood.

Nutrition

Throughout our lives, our diet will change the way our genes are expressed. Consumption of folic acid, B vitamins, and SAM-e, all instrumental in the creation of methyl tags, by the mother during pregnancy is vital to not have chronic under-methylation. If this occurs during your adult life, it will effect you, but it is easily reversed with proper diet.

However, mothers are not the only people who can change your diet. A will-kept log of a small Swedish towns crop harvest showed a correlation between paternal grandparents' diet between 9 and 12 and their grandkids. When there was less food in the grandparent's childhood, the grandchildren would live substantially longer than if their grandparents were fed more.

Epigenetics and the Human Brain

High dietary methyl consumption stabilizes gene expression. This difference is rooted in the epigenetic tags created by methyl, which regulates genes and their amounts of output. Children who are abused that commit suicide have substantially more methyl tags on ribosomal RNA, causing them not to be expressed. Drugs like cocaine create more epigenetic tags in vital parts of the brain, causing relapse and addiction.