AS GOVERNMENTS push for genetically modified crops as their tool to fight hunger and poverty, people must not allow open discussions to die down, a geneticist and molecular biologist from the New Zealand Institute of Gene Ecology warned in his presentation at a forum here, Friday.
"Genes that produce humans, the likes of Einstein, is 98.8 percent identical to that of chimpanzees. Twins have 100 percent similarity between their genomes but we know that they are different," molecular biologist Camilo Rodriguez Beltran said in the forum on "GMO: What can go wrong?" held at the Mindanao Training Resource Center (MTRC) of the Davao Medical School Foundation, Friday.
With the complex interaction of just a few genes, big differences in species and behaviors are derived.
"This is a concept of gene environment. A gene when introduced to a different environment is not stupid to believe that it can change the environment of the genome," he said. Most likely it will interact.
Citing the introduction of the cryotoxin of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) into corn to make the plant (Bt corn) resistant to pests, he said, by isolating the gene from the thuringiensis bacteria that kills insects, man is actually "ordering the genes" to do what it does but this time not as part of the Bt but as part of the corn.
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