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Transgenic Mustard Cleans Up Soils
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers have genetically modified a common plant, the Indian mustard, to absorb more selenium, a toxic heavy metal found in soils polluted by irrigation wastewater. The transgenic plants were four times more efficient at swallowing selenium than natural ones in a contaminated area of California's Central Valley, according to articles from Nature and Wired News. These field tests are only experiments, but the researchers also want to add genes to other plants to remove different toxic materials from soils, such as mercury. What would happen if such transgenic plants filled with dangerous chemicals start to crossbreed with natural ones? Or if an insect eats these plants before being eaten itself in the natural food chain, leading to some selenium in our food? Read more and tell me what you think."
The plant takes selenium (which is bad for other plants,) out of the soil, and the plant can be used for feed, since animals need selenium in their diets.
Since this is a mustard plant, will we have Selenium-fortified mustard on our grocery shelves soon?
In fact, inserting these genes into wheat (not that it's even plausable to do so, but hey) would result in a nice high-selenium flour variation. Seeing as the dietry requirements for selenium are not met by what most people eat, that would be cool!
How we know is more important than what we know.
Selenium is actually a p-type semiconductor, and is also useful in photovoltaic and photoconductive applications. I'm no materials scientist, but if one could cheaply extract the selenium from the plants (say, by burning them & processing the ash) after they've detoxed the soil, it might prove to be a boon to various high-technology businesses.
Read more and tell me what you think.
I think this article/posting is filled with anti-GMO FUD.
I think that's kind of sad for a site like /., which (at least in theory) should be a haven for people who take a positive aproach to life, instead of chicken-little ludites.
And I think that if you really didn't want to know what I think, you shouldn't have asked.
--MarkusQ
What if I ate 2 tons of the selenium plant and died?
What if I ate 2 tons of beas who ate the selenium plant and died?
What if I got stung by a bea who ate the selenium
plant and died from an acute allergy to beas?
What if I got hit by a car whose driver was a lab tech whose company developed the plant which absorbs selenium?
What if I ate two tons of dirt which contained so much selenium, that would otherwise be absorbed by genetically engineered planted, that I died?
What if I ate two tons of dirt? Eeww.
Ok, enough. There are so many irrelevant "what if" questions. The main questions are: What are the benefits of this plant and how do they compare to the risks of this plant _relative_ to the risk of exististing on this planet (including us, other organisms, and the planet itself). Most genetically engineered (and commercially viable) plants have so much benefit that their risks are wildly outweighed. Even with the "what if"'s.
My two cents.
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They should have used some other plant which;
1. Doesn't have wild type relatives.
2. Is not a food crop.
After all, they're not trying to grow food, so it makes sense not to create plants which could interbreed with food crops if there's any chance that this modification could bring unsafe levels of selenium into people's diet. (yes, I know it's a micronutrient, but even more important nutrients, say Iron, are toxic if you get enough)
Then the bar for genetic modification would be much lower. True, genes can jump species barriers, but they're less likely to.
I've heard some other posters talk about Monsanto's so called 'terminator gene' and how it can prevent plants from breeding. I've always wondered if it was 100% effective, since the original purpose was to prevent farmers from reusing GM seeds next year.
It would only have to be 99% effective for that. But it'd have to be 100% effective to prevent a gene from spreading into the wild.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.