GMOs in Food: Benefits and Risks

At this rate, Genetically Modified Organisms within food products will increase dramatically, but is this for the best? There are many sis factors that have been brought up with genetically modified foods such as potential increase of cancer according to a French study conducted by Dry. Giles Eric Israelis (Kalmia, 2012). Genetically modified food is a popular subject among scientists, as it has been researched quite often. A study was done in the Czech Republic over a course of five years (2002-2007) to test many foods, such as tomatoes and rice, for approved and unapproved Genetically Modified Organisms.

Similar to the experiment conducted in the botany lab, the scientists involved in this study used a Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PC, method to determine their results Karol, Story, Localization, Rubrics, 2010). Enrich Dainties and his partners did another similar study, on soybeans specifically. Like our experiment conducted on the cornbread mix, Dainties and his colleagues followed their PC results with an Agrees Gel Electrophoresis (Dainties, Angelic, De Saints, Macaroon and Contain, 2004).

An additional experiment closely related to the one performed by my partners and I is a study done in Brazil to better detect for GUM within their foods sold in markets a other places (Cardinally, Branching, Ferreira, dad Cruz and Gemmed, 2005). These articles show how GUM within odds are present all over the world. The reason my fellow group members and myself are conducting this experiment is to test a sample of processed food (in this case cornbread mix) for any existence of Genetically Modified Organisms using PC methods.

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Gmo Lab Answers

We hypothesize that the cornbread mixture has been genetically modified and therefore will show that in the results. Materials and Methods The purpose of this experiment is to use PC method to identify genetically modified foods. During the experiment we, as a group, tested a known non- GUM food sample, oatmeal, along with our cornbread mix. We first weighed out 0. 77 g f the non- GUM oatmeal. We then proceeded to add 3. 85 ml (5. 00 ml per 1. 00 g) of distilled water (DEW) to the oatmeal and ground them together with a pestle.

The same was done with 0. 99 g of the cornbread mix and 4. 95 ml of DEW. We pipettes each of these into separate screw-cap tubes consisting of 500 1 of an Instigate solution. These we incubated and centrifuged for approximately 5 minutes each. We then took six PC tubes and filled them each up, 2 with the non- GUM oatmeal mixture, 2 with the cornbread mixture and 2 with a known GUM positive substance. The Non- GUM and GUM positives served as controls for the experiment. One of each of the two tubes contained 20 1 of plant MM and GUM MM.

The PC tubes were then placed in a thermal cycled and after this we did an agrees gel electrophoresis to provide us with the necessary data received from bands that should’ve shown up n the gel. Results Even though we had followed procedure and accurately mixed the correct amount and type of DNA and Master Mix together, as shown in Table 1, we ended up getting shocking results. Photos were taken of the final gel slab the morning of the experiment (Fig. 1) and that same afternoon (Fig. 2).

There seemed to be very little signs, if any, of Genetically Modified Organisms within he cornbread mixture. TABLE 1. PC Tube Contents: Tube Number I Master Mix I DANA | 20 1 Plant MM (green) | 20 1 Non- GUM food control DNA | 2 | 20 1 GUM MM (red) | 20 1 Non- GUM food control DNA 3 | 20 1 Plant MM (green) | 20 1 test food DNA I 4 | 201 GUM MM (red)1 20 1 test food DNA I 5 | 20 1 Plant MM (green) | 20 1 GUM positive control DNA | 6 | 20 GUM MM (red)1 201 GUM positive control DNA I FIGURE 1 . GUM Morning (AM) Agrees Gel Electrophoresis results FIGURE 2.

GUM Evening (PM) Agrees Gel Electrophoresis results Discussion: The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether or not a sample of n off-brand cornbread mix had contained Genetically Modified Organisms (GUM). As a result, we determined that there were no GUM traces located in the cornbread mix. This could be due to mistakes that may have been made during the procedure such as poor measuring or mixing, misreading results, or the cornbread mix really was not made with genetically modified foods.

These results disprove our hypothesis, which stated that we believed there would be GUM traces found within the cornbread mix. It was disappointing to see that we had a negative result while many of the other groups received bold nines on their rag gel indicating that their foods contained high amounts of GUM. I was glad to see that not all processed foods contain it though as in with the results of the Czech Republic study.

Out of all the tomatoes and papayas they tested, not one had resulted in the detection of GUM traces (Karol, Story, Localization, Rubrics, 2010). We knew that the gel was accurately detecting GUM traces in foods by using the GUM positive control. Also to back up our assumptions that the Agrees Gel Electrophoresis results are accurate, it is shown in Adenine’s, and other’s, work. He used this method of GUM detection in is study to show that this is an effective way of detecting GUM traces (Dainties, Angelic, De Saints, Macaroon and Contain, 2004).

It is interesting to see how genealogical modified foods are not only in the US but also in the Czech Republic and even in Brazil markets, where Cardinally and his associates looked into Roundup Ready soybeans and checked other substances for GUM traces (Cardinally, Branching, Ferreira, dad Cruz and Gemmed, 2005). Though I was disappointed to get negative results, I am happy that there was a variety in GUM traces within the whole lab. I don’t know if we would have learned much if we all got positive results. It would cause us to just assume that all processed foods have been genetically altered.