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Genetically Modified Foods : The Golden Rice

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Scientists all over the world have come up with new ways to improve our everyday lives. One of these examples are GMO. GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism, and with this, the scientists are able to alter an organism 's gene and make a new product. One of the benefits that come out of GMO is, scientists are able to produce genetically modified foods. Today 80% of the food we consume have been genetically modified, such as: wheat, cotton, corn, and many more. In this assignment I was able to choose any organism that was GM (genetically modified). The organism that I have chosen, is called the Golden Rice.

In the year of 2000, the first genetically modified rice was successively introduced into the world by two scientists, Ingo Potrykus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg. The original name of the Golden Rice was called SGR1. The Golden Rice is genetically modified so that vitamin A is in every grain of Golden Rice. Although the rice plant can naturally make the beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, it only occurs in the leaf of the rice plant during photosynthesis. However, for the scientists to make the Golden Rice they had to insert the genes of a daffodil (phytoene synthase) and a gene from a soil bacterium called Erwinia uredovora (carotenoid desaturase) into the rice nuclear genome and under the endosperm promoter. By putting the genes in the promoter of the endosperm, the Vitamin A was able to be

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