A Nutty Kind of GMO

GMO PEANUTS

If you have a peanut allergy, the thought of actually eating a peanut can be downright frightening. But what if you could eat an allergy-free GMO peanut?  Would you trust it?  Thanks to the revolutionary genome editing technology CRISPR/Cas9, there’s a new kind of GMO, and the proteins that cause peanut allergies may be tweaked so you no longer have a reaction.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are typically made by transferring genes from one type of species (e.g. bacteria) to another (plants) to make the recipient resistant to disease or drought, for example. With the new gene editing method, DuPont plans to only swap in genes from other varieties of the same plant.

This is much faster than conventional breeding and it may be more appealing to people, too, since the gene editing method only swaps genes from other varieties of the same plant.

With lighter regulation in the US, some of these plants could be available much sooner than typical GMOs, industry officials say.

To read more on the new gene editing technique, read the article, written by Tanya Lewis, at http://www.businessinsider.com/crispr-allergy-free-gmo-peanuts-2015-10

Author: renezimbelman

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