Line 4Line 4 Copyic/close/grey600play_circle_outline - material
Answers

Question

Im aware of a few examples of naturally occurring GMOS such as the sweet potato, butterflies and some plants, but where can I find a more extensive list and how often does this occur?

Submitted by: Michael Fest


Answer

Expert response from Community Manager

Moderator for GMOAnswers.com

Tuesday, 19/04/2016 14:30

Currently, there are nine crops from GM seeds commercially available in the United States. These crops are corn (field and sweet), soybeans, cotton, canola, alfalfa, sugar beets, papaya, potatoes and squash. Apple is approved and coming to market soon.

Answer

Expert response from Dr. L. Curtis Hannah

Professor, University of Florida

Tuesday, 19/04/2016 14:29

Thanks for such an interesting question. I like this because it allows me to discuss the vast area of gene movement and gene variability that occurs in living organisms. Initially, one can go back to “the beginning” of higher life forms such as the plants we grow, the animals in our lives and yes even “us” and note that some of the organelles we have in our cells originally came from bacteria. All higher life forms have mitochondria and plants have chloroplasts as well. Both of these organelles were originally bacteria that were taken up by cells of higher organisms. These organelles contained their own genetic material. But over time, many of these genes in the organelles have moved into the nucleus of the higher organisms. Secondly, it is now well proven that some genes actually and naturally move from one organism to another. The phenomenon is called horizontal gene transfer and I refer you to a paper by Patrick J. Keeling and Jeffrey D. Palmer called “Horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotic evolution” published in Nature Reviews Genetics 9, 605-618 (August 2008) as an example of this. Thirdly, it is quite interesting that DNA sequencing projects now show that not all varieties of a particular plant contain the same genes. Some varieties differ from other varieties by more than a 1000 genes. A colleague and I published a paper reviewing this (Lal and Hannah 2005 “Helitrons contribute to the lack of gene colinearity observed in modern maize inbreds.” Proc. Natl Acad Sciences 102:9993). We also noted how naturally occurring “jumping genes” can pick up pieces of existing genes and synthesize new genes.

 

In summary, what is becoming quite clear now is that genes of virtually all organisms are in a state of dynamic flux. New genes are being made, genes are being lost and genes from one organism are moving into other organisms. All of this occurs naturally. Of course the frequency of these events is low. And, perhaps most importantly, most of these observations we have so far were made by studying other phenomena. But in this day of rapid and cheap DNA sequencing, I suspect we will be seeing much more of this.