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Scientists Genetically Engineer the World's First Blue Chrysanthemum (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit shares an article from Science magazine: True blue flowers are a rarity in nature -- they occur only in select species like morning glories and delphiniums. Now, researchers have created a genuinely blue chrysanthemum by adding two genes to the normally pink or reddish flower. The advance could be applied to other species -- and it may mean that florists wanting to hawk blooms of blue will no longer have to dye them...
The next step for Noda and his colleagues is to make blue chrysanthemums that can't reproduce and spread into the environment, making it possible to commercialize the transgenic flower. But that approach could spell trouble in some parts of the world. "As long as GMO [genetically modified organism] continues to be a problem in Europe, blue [flowers] face a difficult economic future," predicts Ronald Koes, a plant molecular biologist at the University of Amsterdam who was not involved with the work.
The next step for Noda and his colleagues is to make blue chrysanthemums that can't reproduce and spread into the environment, making it possible to commercialize the transgenic flower. But that approach could spell trouble in some parts of the world. "As long as GMO [genetically modified organism] continues to be a problem in Europe, blue [flowers] face a difficult economic future," predicts Ronald Koes, a plant molecular biologist at the University of Amsterdam who was not involved with the work.
Informed individuals don't have a problem with GMOs, they have a problem with companies that want absolute control of GMOs. While this is a novel thing they have made, the vast majority of GMOs are to make plants resist increasingly caustic herbicides/pesticides. The problem with this is that despite how much you clean it, trace amount of the herbicides/pesticides remain on the plant and if ingested then become part of you and there is no real research into the long term effects of this. What's worse is that herbicides/pesticides don't just land on the crops, trace amounts are in the air which can be enough to kill unmodified plants. On top of that, being unable to use seeds from a previous generation of plant forces a continual dependence on a corporation which is only harmful to everyone but the GMO owner.
TL;DR: GMOs are fine but corporations are assholes who don't care if you live or die.
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