Dave Kovalic

Regulatory New Technology Lead, Monsanto Company

Company Expert Monsanto

Expert Bio

I grew up in an agricultural community in the UK and I am passionate about finding ways improved agriculture can lead to better lives globally. My education has been in the areas of Molecular Biology, Bioinformatics and Information Management. I have worked at Monsanto since 1998 with a special interest in the study of genomes, new “-omic” technologies and large scale data analytics.

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Q: I understand that the current generation of transfection vectors are not directed and thus insertion of genes into host genomes is random. I'm curious as to what techniques labs employ to screen genotypes for inserts into coding regions or DNA regulatory

Answered By Dave Kovalic - Dec 30, 2013

A: For context, it is important to recognize that random genome insertions have been naturally occurring in crops over the ~10,000-year history of agriculture. In some crops, more than 90 percent of the genome consists of these types of random insertions. It is worth noting that during this long period of time, these “modified” crops have been consumed safely by humans and animals, and there is a very long history of safe use of crops with this type of modification. In the case of GM crops, you are correct in saying that the current methods (transfection systems) we use to insert a ge [...]

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