{"id":34689,"date":"2016-05-03T07:20:19","date_gmt":"2016-05-03T05:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=34689"},"modified":"2016-04-28T10:32:38","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T08:32:38","slug":"how-the-ge-mushroom-could-change-the-debate-around-gmos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/how-the-ge-mushroom-could-change-the-debate-around-gmos\/","title":{"rendered":"How the GE Mushroom Could Change the Debate Around GMOs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, the\u00a0US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced\u00a0that it\u00a0will\u00a0not regulate\u00a0a mushroom that has been genetically modified with the gene-editing tool CRISPR\u2013Cas9. Nature reported<\/a> on\u00a0the Agency\u2019s announcement that\u00a0the GM mushroom can now \u201cbe cultivated and sold without passing through the agency\u2019s regulatory process\u201d \u2014 making it the first CRISPR-edited organism to receive a green light from the US government.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is\u00a0a great example of how biotechnology is being used to better our food. In fact, it may reshape the conversation around \u201cwhere our\u00a0food comes from\u201d and how \u201ctechnology is being used to improve it\u201d for consumers. In a recent piece,\u00a0Fusion\u2019s Kristen Brown discusses<\/a>\u00a0how CRISPR technology could change\u00a0the debate around genetically modified organisms (GMOs):<\/p>\n

Scientists at Pennsylvania State University used the gene-altering technique CRISPR to create a white-button mushroom that doesn\u2019t turn brown as quickly, meaning it can sit in your fridge for longer than usual\u2026<\/p>\n

This is a really big deal\u2014and not just for mushroom lovers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new technology,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>University of Minnesota biologist Daniel F. Voytas told\u00a0Scientific American\u00a0last month, \u201cis necessitating a rethinking of what a GMO is.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Typically, when scientists have sought to genetically modify crops, they\u2019ve relied on techniques that splice genes from one species into another\u2014adding, for example, a bit of\u00a0flounder DNA\u00a0to a tomato to help it survive colder temperatures.<\/p>\n

For obvious reasons, this notion of a mutant fish-tomato gives some people the willies, even though the vast majority of scientists say that it is perfectly safe. But CRISPR, which allows scientists to cut and paste gene sequences more easily than ever, means scientists can more easily alter crops without adding genes from another species. To prevent those white button mushrooms from browning, for example, scientists just had to knock out the bit of DNA responsible for making them turn brown when you cut them\u2026<\/p>\n

Some scientists have argued that this makes foods engineered using CRISPR fundamentally different from the transgenic engineering responsible for crops like that tomato with flounder DNA or Monsanto\u2019s Roundup-resistant corn. This process, they say, is\u00a0a less biologically-disruptive means of altering plants.<\/p>\n

The USDA, it seems, may be inclined to agree. In its\u00a0letter\u00a0to Yinong Yang, the plant pathologist at Pennsylvania State University responsible for the newly engineered mushroom crop, it wrote that because the new mushroom \u201cdoes not contain any introduced genetic material\u201d it isn\u2019t even subject to the agency\u2019s GMO regulations.<\/p>\n

Since the 1990s, the USDA has regulated which genetically modified crops can head to market, the thinking being that crops with foreign DNA could accidentally cause environmental harm. But a mushroom that has simply had some of its DNA deleted, the agency said, seems to present no such threat.<\/p>\n

Anti-GMO activists have been\u00a0zealously\u00a0against crop modification even though the vast majority of the scientific community believes that they are not inherently harmful, so there\u2019s no telling whether CRISPR will change their stance.<\/p>\n

Gary Ruskin, the co-director of U.S. Right to Know, a consumer advocacy group that has come out\u00a0largely against the GMO\u00a0industry, told me via email that the groups concerns about genetically engineered food-crops extend to Penn State\u2019s new CRISPR mushroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are the unknowns about CRISPR generally, and in\u00a0particular, in its application in this mushroom?\u201d he asked. \u201cRegulators should\u00a0determine whether there are off-target effects.\u00a0Consumers have the right to know what\u2019s in our food.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In Europe, however, where anti-GMO advocates have strongly opposed CRISPR, the director of the Swiss Research Institute of Organic Agriculture recently came out in favor of CRISPR, telling\u00a0a German newspaper\u00a0that it\u2019s different from the traditional genetic-engineering technologies and would alleviate many of the concerns groups like his have with older gene-editing techniques.<\/p>\n

In academic labs, many other crops have already been engineered with CRISPR, including soybeans, rice, and potatoes. The agricultural technology firm Dupont is testing using CRISPR to make drought-resistant corn. It told the\u00a0MIT Technology Review\u00a0that it plans to start selling CRISPR-engineered seeds by the end of this decade.<\/p>\n

Yang\u00a0told\u00a0Science News\u00a0that he would also seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration before releasing the crop to market as a precaution, even though he is not technically required to do so. For now, the CRISPR mushroom remains relegated to the lab.<\/p>\n

But, as Voytas points out, the promise of CRISPR\u00a0crops requires rethinking what we consider a GMO, or perhaps how we consider different techniques of genetic engineering in different situations. Is a tomato that\u2019s been spliced with a fish really the same thing as a mushroom that\u2019s just had a teeny bit of plastic surgery? Probably not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, the\u00a0US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced\u00a0that it\u00a0will\u00a0not regulate\u00a0a mushroom that has been genetically modified with the gene-editing tool CRISPR\u2013Cas9. Nature reported on\u00a0the Agency\u2019s announcement that\u00a0the GM mushroom can now \u201cbe cultivated and sold without passing through the agency\u2019s regulatory process\u201d \u2014 making it the first CRISPR-edited organism to receive a green light from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5796],"supplier":[337,5161,9855,494,20444,7016,12190,2640,8400,2713,9223],"class_list":["post-34689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-biotechnology","supplier-dupont","supplier-forschungsinstitut-fuer-biologischen-landbau-fibl-","supplier-mit-technology-review","supplier-monsanto-company","supplier-nature-journal","supplier-pennsylvania-state-university","supplier-science-news","supplier-university-of-minnesota","supplier-usda","supplier-us-food-and-drug-administration-fda","supplier-u-s-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34689"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=34689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}