BCH190 Agriculture Biotechnology

4 Components of Plant Cloning:

1. Tissue Culture 2. Gene Constructs 3. Method for DNA delivery 4. Efficient Selection Strategy

GMO

A designation for "Genetically Modified Organism" indicated the use of transgenics.

BT Toxin

A protein now used in corn, cotton, and potatoes to make them resistant to pests without using pesticides. Future: sunflower, soybeans, canola, wheat, and tomatoes.

The first commercially available genetically engineered plant was released in 1992. It was:

A slow ripening tomato called the Flavr Savr

The presence of various-sized fragments of DNA.

After a gel electrophoresis procedure is run, the pattern of bands in the gel show:

DNA

All of the DNA for an organism is in every single cell of the body or plant.

The majority of climate scientists believe that current trends in climate change are:

Anthropogenic - caused by humans' release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Agricultural forensics

Application of scientific knowledge to questions of agriculture.

It is now possible to make gene constructs in the laboratory by fusing together DNA segments from different sources. If done properly, these cloned constructs can be expressed in plants to confer new and useful traits. For example, genes that encode proteins from a bacteria can be moved into plants to make them resistant to pests without using pesticides. This process of plant improvement has been:

Applied widely and successfully in US agriculture for over fifteen years.

A chemical process that replicates the natural process of photosynthesis, that converts sunlight, and water, into hydrogen and oxygen is a current research focus for alternative energy. The term is commonly used to refer to any scheme for capturing and storing the energy from sunlight in the chemical bonds of a fuel (solar fuel). Photocatalytic water splitting converts water into protons and oxygen, and is a main research area in what current area of research?

Artificial Photosynthesis

It is a reliable resource readily produced in the US and the technology to produce ethanol from corn is well known.

Bioethanol made from corn is currently a renewable energy resource of interest for road fuel largely because:

RNA uses the base Uracil in place of Thymine. The sequence GATTACA in DNA will code for what sequence in RNA in a genetically modified plant?

CUAAUGU --- DNA Base Pairs: C bonds with G and T bonds with A

Biodiesel can be readily made directly from:

Cellulosic and Oil crops (corn, canola, sunflower, peanuts, palm and soybeans)

Bioethanol can be readily made from:

Cellulosic and Oil crops -- Cellulose ethanol is ready to go.

Plasmids

Circular pieces of DNA found in some bacteria.

The four major crops that have been genetically modified and constitute the majority of GM crops that are currently on the market are:

Corn, canola, cotton, soybean

The implementation of agricultural biotechnology is moving much faster than the public education about it. Momentous collective moral decisions about agricultural biotechnology are being made largely by:

Default

The domestication and breeding of dogs is similar in some ways to the domestication of crop plants. The Asian wolf is now accepted as the most likely ancestor of all domestic dogs. There are over four hundred described breeds of dogs today, which can all be genetically traced back to a wild Asian species that lived between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago, before the first agricultural human societies. Similar to the varieties produced of most major crop species, variations in dog breeds:

Derived from wild ancestors and are the direct consequence of selection by humans.

Where do the plants we eat come from? Which of the following processes has NOT been applied to crop plant development during the history of agriculture?

Direct application of the Theory of Special Relativity and particle physics to induce plant variation.

Most of the plants we eat as fruits, vegetables, and grains:

Do no occur in the wild, but have been developed exclusively by humans through section and domestication.

GMOs have been shown to cause long term negative health problems in humans.

FALSE

1984

First Transgenic Plant - Tobacco

1990

First genetically modified corn plants

1983

First genetically modified mice

Former President Jimmy Carter has said that "Biotechnology is not a threat...starvation is." Vitamin A deficiencies are responsible for a million lives a year globally and many of those are in developing countries where the main staple is rice. Dr. Ingo Potykus of Switzerland genetically modified rice to accumulate high levels of beta carotene the natural precursor for vitamin A. Some have argued that it would be unethical to deny this population of such a useful tool to alleviate suffering. This variety is know as:

Golden Rice - 1990's

Plants that have been genetically modified for crop improvement, including corn, canola, cotton, and soybean in the US, have been widely adopted by farmers to reduce input costs and pesticides (1999). The products from these plants:

Have been included in many food products for years now without substantiated affect on human health.

In the 1860's Gregor Mendel discovered "factors" that determined inheritance of traits in plants and by 1906 Thomas Hunt Morgan showed that "genes" are the "factors" that Mendel had discovered, and that genes are located on chromosomes. Then in 1944 Oswald Avery showed that genes are made of DNA! We now know all the genes in:

Humans, gorillas, chimpanzees, zebrafish and pufferfish, mice, rats, and dogs, rice, tomato and corn plants, and more.

Agricultural Biotechnology

Includes domestication, varietal selection, genetics, wide crosses, mutagenesis, and gene transfer for the overall goal to help produce new varieties of crop plants that are useful for people.

Renewable liquid bioenergy from dedicated non-food energy crops, such as switchgrass, poplar trees, and other biomass feedstocks:

Is a good idea and not currently possible but being researched in the US -- Grassoline

Nearly all of the plants available in US grocery stores do not grown in "the wild". Most of our cultivated plants are the result of intensive human intervention over many generations to select for desirable traits, and most of these plants would not even exist without humans. Hybrid corn was first commercialize on a large scale in the US in the 1930s and now, because of vastly improved yields hybrid corn varieties dominate the $52 billion yr corn crop in the US. Hybrid corn:

Is the product of conventional plan breeding involving the use of controlled crosses and in some plants, like corn, by developing inbred parental lines.

There are 7 billion people on the planet, 9 million projected by 2050. What is the best estimate of the carrying capacity for the planet? J.H. Fremlin asked: How many people can the world support?

It cannot be accurately determined based on a variety of yet unknown factors.

Plant cloning

It is now possible to clone any gene from any organism and move it into plants.

The information living things store within their DNA.

Life took about 4 billion years to reach its present level of complexity. To maintain it, life must always come from life, replicating its DNA and passing that information, however changed, from generation to generation. This inevitable conclusion comes from our modern understanding of the key role played by:

There is an interesting parallel between the language of DNA and our own written language. A nucleotide is like a letter; a triplet, or codon, is like a word; a gene, then would be like a paragraph and a chromosome would be like a one volume of a set of encyclopedias with the whole set being like the entire genome. A genet construct used for crop improvement is:

Like a cut and paste document; it is a synthetic sequence of DNA that will be transcribed into RNA and will be translated into a particular protein that corresponds to the sequence of the gene.

Gene constructs can be readily made in the laboratory by fusing together DNA segments from different sources. If done correctly, these cloned constructs can be delivered into plants where there will be stably integrated into the plant's DNA and expressed to confer new and useful traits. Gene constructs can be introduced into plants by:

Microprojectile bombardment (also known as the gene gun or biolistics) delivers DNA by coating small particles of gold with the vector and shooting them into plant cells. Microinjection: using a small needle to inject DNA directly into plant cells. Agrobacterium tumefaciens: a bacteria that acts as a natural gene transfer vector to delivery DNA into plants. Osmotic or electric shock treatments.

Where would you most likely purchase genetically modified seed stock for growing drought tolerant maize?

Monsanto

How long before we run out of oil?

Never...it will become too expensive to use and alternatives will be discovered.

GMO health incidents:

No one substantial human health incident with GMO's has been proven since their inception in 1992....no health threat.

Organic Farming

No synthetic pesticides, no synthetic fertilizers, no GMO's

Delayed Ripening

Now: Tomatos Future: Raspberries, strawberries, cherry tomatos, bananas, pineapples

Terminator

Part of a gene that stops transcription.

Promoter

Part of the gene involved in cell specificity.

Pharmacogenomics

Pharmacology concerned with using DNA and amino acid sequence data to inform drug development.

What biological reaction would be useful for directly removing large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere?

Photosynthesis (artificial)

Totipotency

Plans can be grown back from a single cell.

Aerable Land

Plantable

Photosynthesis

Plants split H2O using sunlight making hydrogen and oxygen....they use CO2 for photosynthesis. All of the energy on the planet comes from photosynthesis

GMO grasses

Project Golden Switchgrass

Parts of GENE

Promoter / Coding Sequence (selectable markers) / Terminator

1972

Recombinant DNA is discovered.

Cellulosic (plants) Ethanol (liquid fuel)

Releasing the energy captured by plants.

Considering the use of biotechnology and the crises of rising population, decline of arable land and water resources, limited energy supplies and unequal distribution of food and a growing decline in global food security the ethics what are the major risks concerning the deployment of biotechnology application to agriculture?

Risk to worldview, human health, environment, and sustainable environment.

Brazil is nearly independent from foreign oil for road transportation. In a project started over fifteen years ago, Brazil uses ethanol derived from the fermentation of what crop?

Sugar Cane

Which organization received a 2007 Nobel prize for their contributions to the data and scientific literature that supports the observations and predictions for global climate change for:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for assessing the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change. (shared with Al Gore)

Gene Cloning

The ability to cut and paste DNA allowed:

Eugenics

The science of improving human population by controlled breeding.

Promoters

The segments of DNA that we call genes usually code for proteins. The region of a strand of DNA, which is "upstream" of the coding sequence either turns on or off the expression of a particular gene. When we say a gene is "on" we mean that it is making mRNA and that protein is translated from the mRNA. In humans and in other animals, there must be eye specific genes, liver specific genes, and genes that are expressed in all cells. Similarly in plants there must be flower specific genes, leaf specific genes, root specific genes and so on. These genes make the proteins that are specific for each function in each tissue. These "upstream" sequences that regulate cell and tissue specific expression are called:

Change the sequence of amino acids in the rote in and have a catastrophic effect on the organism, be benign, or at times, be beneficial.

The sequence of DNA that is called a gene codes for a protein using DNA's four letter code. Three bases will code for one of twenty amino acids. When a gene is expressed, messenger RNA is transcribed from the DNA template and translated into a protein in the cytoplasm. If a single base in the sequence is missing, the mutation could:

Carcinogenics

The study of substances that produce cancer.

Ordinary Tomatose Do Not Contain Genes, while Genetically Modified Ones Do.

This statement is false, all tomatoes contain genes whether they are genetically modified or not.

While it has not yet been done for all organisms on earth, based on what we now know, it is possible to clone any gene from almost any living organism, and make the same protein coded for by that gene. This means that the genetic code is a universal language for life on this planet.

This statement is generally true.

Clone

To copy a piece of DNA (gene) codes for a protein.

It is interesting that because all life on this lane uses information in the form of either DNA, RNA, or both, and that the same bases are used, and that the genetic code is almost always the same using three of those bases to code for one of 20 amino acids...because now genes can be cloned and moved from one organism into another an the foreign gene will make the ams protein! So a gene from a bacteria can be expressed in plant to make the same protein that was made in the bacteria. The process of taking a gene from one species and expressing it in the genome of another species is called:

Transgenics - An organism that contains DNA from another species.

Burning fossil fuels is the leading cause of increased anthropogenic CO2. Forest fires and volcanos also increase CO2.

True

Norman Borlaug

Was a Nobel Laureate for his role in The Green Revolution in 1970.

The molecular weight (size) of the fragment electrical charges of its phosphate groups.

What feature(s) of a DNA fragment causes it to move through a gel during electrophoresis?

Which trait is considered to be MOST important to most plan breeders?

Yield

Genetic engineering of crop plants is controversial because:

cloned DNA is used to create them and people are uncertain about the process. (safety, regulatory issues, distrust of science and big companies, environmental concerns, globalization, right of choice-labeling, and food culture issues)

Genetically engineered crops are now grown:

in large scale agricultural production in many countries across the world including US, Canada, Brazil, and China. They are banned in most European countries.