Dr. Wendy Harwood
The John Innes Centre, UK
Expert Bio
Wendy is a Senior Scientist at the John Innes Centre, Norwich. Her group works on the genetic modification of crop plants, in particular wheat and barley and uses genetic modification as a tool to better understand genes important in the development of improved agricultural crops. Her group is responsible for the BRACT transformation facility that is providing crop genetic modification resources to the research community (www.bract.org). Wendy’s group also works to improve the technology for genetic modification, and to provide data for use in the safety assessment of GM crops. Wendy is active in public engagement and she is also an Honorary Lecturer at the University of East Anglia.
Studies, Articles and Answers
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Question
A: The study referred to looked at the question of whether fragments of DNA, consumed in our food, could pass into the blood stream. The main finding was that this could happen and that fragments of DNA large enough to contain whole genes could enter the human circulation system. Previous to this study, it was thought than DNA would be completely degraded during the digestion process. We consume large amounts DNA from plants in our everyday diet. If the diet contained some GM products then some of the DNA consumed could come from this source. DNA from a GM plant source would be no different to DN [...]
A: For more information on this topic, please review this recent response from David Tribe, Senior Lecturer, Agriculture and Food Systems/Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne: http://gmoanswers.com/ask/i-recently-looked-article-states-new-genetically-modified-wheat-can-silence-wheat-genes-and-can. [...]