Could the Food You Eat In the Next Couple of Years Be Fake?
What if you could have food that tasted better, healthier, and made it possible to solve the problem of not having enough food around the world?
Sounds awesome, right? Well, at what cost would these benefits be executed?
Gene editing is one of the fastest emerging technologies, and in the last five years, we have already made so much progress. Researchers can now cut out certain areas of DNA to control traits. When the DNA is extracted, the cell’s genetic structure will regenerate without or with the new DNA. As an example, if a researcher really wanted to, they could make it so that tomatoes had twice as many branches, or for a banana to be grown without seeds. Twice as many branches mean that we have twice as many tomatoes from one plant.
Gene Editing is being used in many other forms, and one of the most popular is as in medicine. Gene editing humans has also been increasing in popularity but, it works a little differently than it does in tomatoes, but the concept is the same. A human could be gene-edited to inherit chosen genes instead of ones that could potentially be harmful to the human.
Benefits:
Going back to tomatoes, there are a number of things that you can achieve when changing the DNA, and some of these include, more nutritious tomatoes, more resilient to weather patterns. When tomatoes are impervious to harsh conditions, crop yields are larger, in addition to doubling the amount of food that is made, as well as the healthier benefit... there are many positives to gene editing the food that we eat, and finding new benefits is what researchers are always working on.
CRISPR:
Research is heavily focused on a very reliable and easy way of gene editing CRISPR- which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. To put it simple CRISPR is an alternative to transgenic engineering, it is a gene-editing technique that’s applied to selective breeding. Scientists “edit” a plant’s genome to get desired traits.
Risks:
Because these foods are being regulated, they are being labeled as GMO, genetically modified organisms. There is no guarantee to what will happen to a specific food that is mutated using CRISPR/Any type of gene editing. Because of this partial guarantee, we don’t know what will happen to the food in the sense of maybe a new virus, or even a new harmful bacteria that is accidentally created through the gene editing process.
Having GMO foods can be beneficial in the short run, but long run problems may be the cause of the stop of the manufacturing of fake foods.
the term “fake” foods directly correlates with GMOs, interestingly enough genetically modified organisms can be very healthy, and are making a rise in commercial use. There are so many people right now on earth who have nothing to eat, and with the increasing life span due to things like gene editing, there needs to be more food to feed the billions of people here on earth. There are many healthy alternatives to GMOs but the future seems that it is going to primarily focus on making sure that everyone is fed.
Solution:
Doing research on gene editing is about finding more efficient ways to improve crop productivity and is constantly being supported by those in the field. For a long time, commercial tomato breeders preferred fewer rather than too many branches, because the plant would fall under the weight of fruit or be unable to convert those extra flowers into fruits, allowing for yields to be less than expected, and using gene editing we could find the point where both situations are satisfied.
Having multiple tests with gene editing will be the fastest and best way to make sure that what we are doing will be enough to feed everyone, as well as be safe for everyone to eat. Mutations can happen in any organism but whose to say that it wont happen BECAUSE of gene editing. Testing multiple times will decrease the chances of something happening that was unintentional because we can begin to record what happens at that very point.
Farming/Gene Editing:
Geneticists involved with plants are now hoping to bring gene editing to farmers who are involved with trying to maximize their yield at a low cost and low tech effort. Samuel Acheampong is currently developing a bigger sweet potato using the Crispr technique. He explained how he mapped the genome of the American-bred variety of sweet potato he’s using in order to identify the location of a set of genes, called CWII, that regulate the flow of sugar from photosynthesis in the leaves to the roots and tubers.
“Vitamin A deficiency is a problem in Ghana. So you want to help to address this by improving the beta-carotene,” says Acheampong. “We can do this in two or three years. Whatever I learn here I’m taking back to Ghana.”
There is still lots of debate whether or not gene editing will become the next big thing (in my opinion, this will be huge!- especially in medicine) because of the not so steady advancements that are being made in this field. There are huge breakthroughs as well as steady growth.
Slowly but surely, companies are allowing for Crispr gene-edited commercial crops destined to be ingredients from corn, wheat, flax, and canola.
Soon we will have actual food that is sweeter, more efficient, and more practical.
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