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Genetically Modified Organisms For Food Sources Essay

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Introduction: GMO, genetically modified organisms, are organisms that are used for food sources and are manipulated by biotechnology, most often by gene transfer (Ahmed, 2002). Most agricultural food sources such as fruits, vegetables, or any other mass-produced crops are known examples of GMO (Owens, 2000). Many question the ethics or reasoning behind the production of GMOs due to its interference with naturally bound events but biotechnological gene transfer is vastly beneficial because it leads to: multiplication of crop yields, more affordable food sources, food security, and resistance to pests and harmful diseases (Phillips, 2004). Benefits of GMO are inevitable and are beneficial to almost everyone, but precautions are made to routinely regulate GMOs due to possible health complications (Weiss, 2014).
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was the primary method used for this experiment to test for genetically modified organisms by determining the presence of 35s, the GMO biomarker (Hardegger et al., 1999). PCR amplifies specific segments of DNA, producing millions of copies of a specific DNA sequence. PCR uses thermal cycling, which causes enzymatic replication of the selected DNA sequence (Bartlett, 2003). The 35s promoter is used to amplify the sequence of DNA that is present in GMO. This particular gene region is approximately 162 base pairs and the 35s promoter cannot amplify any other sequence but the GMO specific sequence. This will make the 35S promoter the key to

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