Monday, August 6, 2018

Genetics Technology Could Lead to More Crops, Fresher Food

The J.R. Simplot Company is the first company to ever receive a license for gene editing technology created by DowDuPont Inc, Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University. This type of technology will be used to edit genes of crops so they can stay fresher longer in grocery stores. It's an issue for some people because they don't believe that it's naturally right to edit something that is natural in the world. There is no current evidence of what genetically modified crops could do to humans, but it is possible that something can happen in the long-run. The technology is called CRISPR-Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) and it speeds up the breeding process. Simplot has already used different genetic techniques to improve bruising and blight in potatoes and will continue to use this technology to improve their expertise of it.

I believe that gene-editing should not be used on crops because we don't know what it will do to our body in the future. If it comes down to the very last moment where crops are scarce, then I believe that it is necessary to perform this technique. But right now, we have enough resources to keep crop production going.

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2 comments:

  1. we have been altering things since we could, modifying food to fit our populations needs. It would be almost unnatural for us to not continue to do so.

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  2. do not know why this showed up as unknown

    ReplyDelete