Genetically Green Fluorescent Escherichia Coli

“Sixty to seventy percent of all processed foods available on store shelves contain genetically modified ingredients”, according to George Erdosh and Marcia Amidon Lusted in “To GMO or not to GMO? Genetically engineered food has strong advocates and harsh critics.” Genetically modified organisms can be found in most conventional foods processed in the United States, and genetic modification of crops is extremely common on classic Minnesota farms. Crops such as corn and soybeans or even papaya and zucchini are viable for genetic modification. In fact, the definition of (GMO) as reported by Alex K. Rich and Tom Warhol, authors of “Genetically Modified Foods: An Overview,” is, “food in which, at some point during the production process molecules and proteins are chemically altered to give the food more nutrients, a better appearance, and a longer shelf life.” As a matter of fact, a majority of all the foods found at the grocery store are genetically altered. However, many people do not know what genetic modification really is, or that the idea has been around for many years. GMOs are used to control pests and weeds. Therefore, through changing the genetic makeup of the plant, modifications allow for advancements of new technologies that account for the applicability of specific chemicals, as opposed to dated Non-GMO farming techniques.

Genetic modified organisms, or GMOs, are living organisms that, through the genetic engineering process, have been altered to withstand certain chemicals and increase the nutritional value of the product. In fact, the majority of the foods found at the grocery store are genetically altered. Genetic modification is becoming increasingly popular on farms throughout the United States and moving into other parts of the world due to their increasing yield capabilities and pest and weed control. However, this has been, and continues to be, an extremely controversial topic of discussion in the world of agriculture and biotechnology, as well as health food critics, because of potential environmental and health risks.

“Sixty to seventy percent of all processed foods available on store shelves contain genetically modified ingredients”, according to George Erdosh and Marcia Amidon Lusted in “To GMO or not to GMO? Genetically engineered food has strong advocates and harsh critics.” Genetically modified organisms can be found in most conventional food processed in the United States., and gGenetic modification of crops is extremely common on classic Minnesotan farm plants, such as, corn and soybeans. They can also be found in papaya and zucchini, even animals such as cows and pig. In fact, the definition of (GMO) as reported by Alex K. Rich and Tom Warhol, authors of “Genetically Modified Foods: An Overview,””, is, “food in which, at some point during the production process molecules and proteins are chemically altered to give the food more nutrients, a better appearance, and a longer shelf life.” As a matter of fact, a majority of all the foods found at the grocery store are genetically altered. However, many people do not know what a genetic modification really is, or that the idea has been around for many years. GMOs are used to control pests and weeds. As the opposite of Non-GMO farming, this is accomplished by changing the genetic makeup of the plant, by using new technologies and techniques that allow for the use of specific chemicals.

This lab is about moving genes from one thing to another using plasmids. Plasmid has the ability to replicate, so it replicates independently, and separately from the chromosomal DNA. Plasmid are one or more small piece of DNA and they enter cells as a double strand DNA. When they enter the cell as a doubke strand they do not invade he chromosomal DNA. We will also transform bacteria into GFP which is mainly from the jelly fish Aequorea Victoria. The GFP causes the the jelly fish to fluorescent and glow in the dark. After the transformation, bacteria starts to make the GFP which causes them to glow a green color under a ultraviolet light.

In the pGLO Bacterial Transformation lab, Escherichia coli is transformed with a gene encoding green fluorescent protein by inserting a plasmid containing the GFP gene, beta-lactamase, and arabinose into the bacterium. Successfully transformed bacteria will grow in the presence of ampicillin and glow a bright green color under ultraviolet light. The sugar arabinose is responsible for switching on the GFP gene in the transformed cells, without it, the gene will not be expressed.

Genetically Modified Organism or GMO is an organism that has been altered genetically. There are many possibilities for altering an organism such as growing conditions, quantity, or even scientific breakthroughs. Many choose a side over this heated debate, whether GMOs are safe or if they are harmful to humans. Currently about two-thirds of all items in the supermarket is GMO(Corn The Miracle Crop). GMO promise increase crop yields, lower costs, and less herbicides and pesticides. Altering the organisms genetics could negatively affect the organism resulting in an unstable product. Researchers have found that an unstable product can result in poor crop production, decrease in nutritional value, toxic and

Imagine... a virus... It slowly takes control over your body, whittling away at your immune system, poisoning you from the inside. You pass the virus to your children. It can't be stopped! How do you get the virus? It's in 70% of our food! Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are plants that have their DNA structure modified to be immune to pesticides. The farmers can spray whatever pesticides and whatever amount they want on these plants and they will not be harmed. The result of this is your food drenched in pesticides and various chemicals that can cause cancer and countless other ailments. Genetically modified organisms are

In this lab, our purpose was to create a recombinant DNA of two plasmids pKAN-R and pARA, to create a plasmid that contains the rfp gene that will ultimately glow. To do this, we obtained two circular pieces of DNA, commonly known as plasmids. The two plasmids we worked with are called pKAN-R and pARA. The pKAN-R plasmid includes the kanamycin resistant gene. Kanamycin is an antibiotic that prevents bacteria from creating proteins, which ultimately kills the bacteria because cells need to perform protein synthesis to live. The kanamycin resistant gene encodes for phosphotransferase which is an enzyme that destructs the effects of the antibiotics by transferring a phosphate group to the kanamycin molecule. The pKAN-R plasmid also contains red

Genetically modified organisms, otherwise known as GMOs, are a great danger to humanity. GMOs are genetically altered organisms engineered with the purpose to be resistant to dangerous pesticides, or to repel certain pests or certain viruses. The main purpose of them is to save farmers money when it comes to harvesting crops and cutting down labor costs. Overall, GMOs (also known as biotech or transgenic crops) are not safe and there are many reasons to prove it. First and foremost, GMOs pose a great risk to people’s health. GMOs are not natural. Scientists have developed these to help increase crop yields and profits for farmers and the companies selling the seeds and pesticides. They sacrifice people’s health at the expense of risks such as, humans developing allergies and possible resistance to antibiotics. Second, the environment will suffer greatly from GMOs by increasing the use of harmful herbicides. GMOs have insecticidal properties in their DNA. This on its own can be very harmful and poisonous to the ecosystem. The required herbicides used on GMOs to kill the weeds are also very dangerous to the environment. Lastly, GMOs cause great distress to organic agriculture. The organic agriculture is being compromised and abolished when GMOs come into contact with organic crops. While only a few big companies hoard the seed industry, this can be the demise of the planet’s organic agriculture. That will leave GMO companies in charge of the

GMOs are plants and animals that have been genetically engineered with DNA from bacteria, viruses, and other plants and animals in order to take on specific characteristics. This of course does not occur naturally within nature. They are engineered to withstand herbicide and produce insecticide (Lee). Although crops which are able to withstand herbicide worked very well in the first couple of years, over reliance caused the herbicide resistant crops to pass on their genes to the weeds, and as a result, emerged “super weeds” which forced farmers to increase spraying crops (Clark). Between 1996 and 2008 farmers sprayed an extra 386

Did you know that 95% of the nation 's sugar beets, 94% of soybeans, 90% of the cotton and 88% of feed corn today are genetically engineered. According to the Institute for Responsible technology, Genetically Modified Organisms are the result of a laboratory process where genes from the DNA of one species are extracted and artificially forced into the genes of an unrelated plant or animal. Today in the United States there are seven major genetically altered crops including Maize, Soybean, Cotton, Canola, Sugarbeet, Alfalfa, Papaya, and Squash. GMO’s came along by farmers having flaws with a crop, like if a tomato had a beetle every year and the farmer was spending large amounts of money on pesticides every year. Then a biotechnology company comes out with a tomato that produces its own natural pesticide, you would be nuts to continue in the old ways.

In this lab experiment, students had to create a growth curve for E. coli. The E. coli growth curve would illustrate the progression of the population of E. coli a set time period. In this case, the growth curve depicted the population of E. coli over a 12-hour period. The growth curve for E. coli was created from the absorbance levels, the optical density(OD), recorded from the spectrophotometer.

This experiment was performed to test the hypothesis if LB nutrient broth, +pGLO and -pGLO Ampicillin, and Arabinose was placed in the E. coli plates, then there will be a significant growth in the newly transformed bacteria and it will possess the ability to glow under UV light. The measurements were recorded from the bent glass tube in each glass test tube. The transformation protocol tested for the newly possessed traits in E.coli bacteria. Throughout the experiment there were many probable reasons for failure. If the pipettes and sterile loop were not thrown out in between each use, a cross contamination could cause a miscalculation in the experiment causing the data results to fail. The hypothesis that was tested was validated due to the positive results with each experiment stating that newly transformed organisms due in fact pass on traits.

GMOs are organisms with a modified genetic material (Du 2014). This process is done by genetically engineering (GE) the organisms through the use of recombinant DNA which allows transfer of genetic material from one species to another (Du 2014). This technique allows for the production of crops with cost-effective and favourable qualities such as pesticide and herbicide resistance. One of the original intents for this technology was to aid farmers by creating herbicides-resistant seeds in order to increase their yield, decrease costs and the amount of pesticides sprayed while still effectively destroying unnecessary weeds (Dimayuga 2014). This should have been beneficial to the environment, however the introduction of these GM plants has led to increased pesticide resistance which ultimately requires additional use of pesticides. Another, unintentional

According to the World Health Organization (2014. 1), "Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can be defined as organisms (i.e. plants, animals or microorganisms) in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination. The technology is often called 'modern biotechnology ' or 'gene technology ', sometimes also 'recombinant DNA technology ' or 'genetic engineering '. Foods produced from or using GM organisms are often referred to as GM foods.” Many organic crops farming farmers are against cultivating of GM crops because of the threat to farm land and environment however, biotechnology companies and GM crops growing famer desire to have profit and consumer look for low price. Thus, the debate over the environmental impact of genetically modified GM crops is growing. Although GM crops negatively affects on some organism in environment, they reduce the use of pesticides and increase crop yield.