Gene-Altered Apples Get U.S. Approval

U.S. government has approved the commercial planting of Apples, which are genetically engineered to develop the resistant against turning brown, when bruised or sliced. The researcher of Okanagan Specialty Fruits said that it seems that non-browning feature will be popular among both consumers and food service companies as it has ability to make sliced apples more appealing than normal apple.

But many other executives in the apple industry stated that we are worry that the biotech apples are safe to eat or not or will consumers accept it or not? They also express their concern that exports of apples from other countries will like genetically modified foods or not?

The Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for the approval of genetically engineered apples said, that they have considered these issues, however this approval was based on whether; a genetically modified crop poses a threat to other plants or not and the Department of Agriculture confirmed that these apples posed no such risk.

These Arctic apples will be available in the Golden Delicious and Granny Smith varieties as they are genetically engineered with a technique to suppress the production of an enzyme, which causes browning when cells in the apple get injured from slice. The non-browning effect is not comes in existence by putting genes from another species into the apple’s DNA, which is widely used method with most of the genetically altered crops.

In this process, apple’s own genes are manipulated in a way to turn down the browning mechanism. Before that in November 2014, the Agriculture Department has approved a genetically engineered potato, which was developed by the J.R. Simplot Company, which has used similar technique to prevent browning. Now apple will join the community of other genetically modified fruits and vegetables such as; sweet corn and papaya.

A representative of the Agriculture Department said that it will take a time to analyze the issues and all comments, which we have received as in two different public comment periods we have received more than 175,000 comments and it is clear indication that majority have opposed the approval.

While majority in the apple industry had opposed the approval as some of them are saying that they will work to ensure that customers and clients know most apples are not modified and when modified apple’s comes in market so they will be safe. This approval was unusual in Okanagan, which is in Summerland, British Columbia. Most of the genetically modified crops are developed through large chemical and seed companies such as; DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto.

It is expected that Arctic apples will be available in few years because trees have to first be planted and then they will get mature enough to bear fruit. In a recent conversation with press Mr. Carter said that in this spring four growers will plant a total of 20,000 trees within the covering of 20 acres or more and it is expected that by fall of 2016, from 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of apples would come in market, which will be great amount to provide samples to food service companies and for other potential buyers, whereas; in stores product will reach in very small amount.

Scientists Create 'Genetic Firewall' For New Forms of Life

Scientists to Create `Genetic Firewalls’

According to Harvard and Yale researchers, synthetic amino acids would someday enable scientists in creating `genetic firewalls’ which could prevent GMO crops or animals from escaping in the wild thus causing environmental damage. Recently scientists have come up with genetically engineered bacteria whose survival was based on lab-formulated amino acid and by `locking in’ this synthetic nutritional need, they consider that the bacteria would die quickly if they tend to escape from their carefully controlled environment to enter into the world.

A year later after creating organisms which used genetic code that was different from other living things, this team of scientists achieved another `synthetic biology’ milestone in creating bacteria which cannot survive without a specific manmade chemical and overcome a major hurdle to wider use of genetically modified organisms – GMOs. A report states what one scientist calls a `genetic firewall’ to obtain biocontainment which is a means of insuring that GMOs cannot survive outside a lab or other confined environment. Though two of the lab accomplished the bacteria, there seems to be no fundamental barrier in applying the technique to animals and plants.

Microbes Engineered from Mundane to Exotic

Biologist George Church of Harvard Medical School leading one of the studies, reported that `he thinks that they are moving in that direction’ and if the technique is successful, it could be utilised in microbes engineered for users from mundane to exotic like producing yogurt and cheese, in synthesizing industrial chemicals as well as biofuels, cleaning of toxic waste together with manufacturing of drugs.

For those applications, microbes have already been used and in some cases they contain genes from unrelated organism thereby making them genetically engineered or genetically modified, to overcome oil spills or produce insulin. Widespread usage of such GMOs constrained by concerns could escape into the wide resulting in much damage.

Church’s team in the year 2013 had reported that they had gone ahead of genetic engineering in order to create genomically recoded organisms where recoding means a bit of DNA codes for amino acid – a building block of proteins, which is different from a similar DNA code for every other living thing. Biologists, have revised the genetic spelling book. The altered bacteria which Church along with his team dubbed genomically recoded organisms or GROs is described in a pair of studies in the journal `Nature’

E. Coli Bacteria

The new studies team comprising of Church and a former colleague, Farren Isaacs, developed strains of E. coli bacteria which contained both DNA for manmade amino acid and the need for synthetic amino acids for survival. Since amino acids does not exist in nature, Isaacs presently at Yale University, was of the opinion that the resulting firewall means any GMO escaped from a lab manufacturing facility of agricultural field would not survive.

His team made 49 genetic changes to E. coli in order to make them dependent on the synthetic amino acid and as per his calculations, the odds of a microbe undoing the changes are astronomically high. Church states that by pairing genomic recoding with the firewall, biologist can create escape proof microbes wherein by incorporating novel amino acids could develop new form of drugs as well as polymers.