There are many genetically modified foods from plants. For example, bread production needs wheat with high protein content, while the current wheat variety protein has low content. Transferring the highly expressed protein gene into wheat will make bread have better baking performance.
Tomato is a kind of fruit and vegetable with rich nutrition and high economic value, but it is not resistant to storage. In order to solve the storage problem of tomatoes and other fruits, researchers found that the enzyme gene that controls the ethylene synthesis of plant aging hormone is an important gene that leads to plant aging. If the expression of this gene can be inhibited by genetic engineering and the biosynthesis of ethylene, an aging hormone, can be controlled, tomatoes will not become soft and rotten easily. Many scientists from the United States, China and other countries have cultivated this new tomato variety through their efforts. This tomato is anti-aging, anti-softening, storage-resistant, and can be transported for a long distance, which can reduce the waste in processing, production and transportation.
The second category is animal genetically modified food.
There are also many kinds of animal genetically modified foods. For example, human genes are transferred to cattle, and the milk produced by cows when they grow up contains genetic drugs, which can be used to treat human diseases after extraction. By transferring the human auxin gene into the genome of pigs, the growth rate of pigs has doubled and the quality of pork has been greatly improved. Now such pork is invited to the table in Australia.
The third category, genetically modified microbial food.
Microorganisms are the most commonly used transformation materials for transgene, so transgenic microorganisms are relatively easy to cultivate and widely used. For example, chymosin used to be extracted only from the stomachs of killed calves. Nowadays, transgenic microorganisms can be produced in large quantities in vitro, which avoids the innocent death of calves and reduces the production cost.
The fourth category, genetically modified special food.
Scientists use biological genetic engineering to turn ordinary crops such as vegetables, fruits and grain into magical "vaccine food", which can prevent diseases. Scientists have cultivated an alfalfa plant that can prevent cholera. Feeding this alfalfa to mice can greatly enhance their disease resistance. Moreover, this cholera antigen can withstand the corrosion of gastric acid without being destroyed, which can stimulate the body's immune ability to cholera. Therefore, more and more disease-resistant genes are transferred to plants, so that people can taste delicious fresh fruits and achieve the purpose of preventing diseases.
● Genetically modified crops are widely planted in the world, and the United States, Argentina and Canada are the countries with the largest planting area in the world.
● China ranks fourth in the world in genetically modified crops, mainly genetically modified cotton. The main transgenic crops are: soybean, cotton, corn, rape, sugar beet, fruit and so on.
Safety of genetically modified food
● Genetically modified crops themselves may become weeds.
● Related wild species of transgenic crops become weeds or super weeds.
● Genetically modified crops may produce new virus diseases.
● Harm of genetically modified crops to non-target organisms
● Destroy biodiversity.
● Effects of genetically modified crops on ecosystems and ecological processes
● Other unpredictable risks.
● Exogenous genes introduced by genetically modified organisms can often express protein, which may cause changes in the metabolism and nutritional composition of organisms.
Changes in the composition of genetically modified organisms, especially the contents of toxic substances, anti-nutritional factors and allergens, will affect the safety of the organisms as food.
Possible harm of genetically modified food to human body
● Toxins in genetically modified crops can cause acute and chronic poisoning or have carcinogenic, teratogenic and mutagenic effects.
● Exempted or sensitized substances in crops can cause abnormal or allergic reactions.
● Changes in major nutrients, micronutrients and anti-nutritional factors in genetically modified foods will reduce the nutritional value of foods and make their nutritional structure unbalanced.
There are many common genetically modified foods on the market. Vegetables, fruits, grains and meat may all be genetically modified, such as tomatoes (not cherry tomatoes, which do not belong to this category), corn, wheat and imported beef, which involve many aspects of our lives.
I guess you may be worried about the safety of genetically modified food, so you raised this question. Now, many people are talking about this issue again, and even the two sessions said that the safety certification of genetically modified rice had been passed at the meeting. Most experts have made their positions clear: Academician Yuan Longping said in an interview with the media that biotechnology, including genetic modification, is an inevitable trend of agricultural science and technology, but people are not at ease "understandable" about genetically modified products, and he himself is willing to try, and suggested recruiting volunteers, especially young volunteers, to conduct clinical trials to determine whether genetically modified foods are safe. Fang also said that genetically modified foods are harmless to people.
I am a biology major, and I feel that I don't care whether the video is genetically modified. At least from what I have learned, genetic modification is safe.