Harvest of Fear

Should we Grow GM Crops?

Instructions: Read the page and click YES or NO, reach the next...click YES or NO...etc until you’ve read all the arguments -- You will need to do this 12 times in order for your votes to be tallied. Navigate the site, each of the bold headings below are links within the site


1. What is a GM Crop.
Genetically modified foods are derived form genetically modified organisms. Genetically modified organisms have had specific changes introduced into their DNA genetic engineering techniques. GM crop farming is expanded rapidly around around the world. Global acreage of GM crop has risen 25-fold in just four years, from approximately 4.3 million acres in 1996 to about 100 million acres in 1999. Industry, government, and many academic scientists tout the benefits of GM foods for agriculture, ecosystems, and human health and well-being, including feeding a world population bursting at the seams. Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct human manipulation of an organism's genetic make material in a way that does not occur under natural conditions. GM crops have enhanced taste an quality than naturally grown crops, their maturing time is reduced, increased nutrients, yields, and stress tolerance, improved resistance to disease, pests, and herbicides, and new products and growing techniques.


2. List 2 arguments FOR the growing of GM crops

1. What if you knew that proponents assert that GM foods will promise many health benefits?

a. GM foods will be better for us, with some products that are already working and ones that benefit our waistlines and other bearing higher nutritional content.

2. What if you knew that advocates maintain that GM technology will help the environment?

a. In the U.S. alone, farmers spray, spread, and otherwise administer more than 970 million tons of insect- and plant-killers every year. These pose threats to the environment. Pesticide residues linger on crops and in soil, find their way into the guts of wildlife that eat contaminated foliage, and leach into groundwater and wash into streams. If a crop boasts its own ability to resist invertebrate predators, then farmers can use far fewer chemicals

3. List 2 arguments AGAINST the growing of GM crops.

1. What if you knew that detractors fear that GM food might pose health risks for certain people?

a. Some people, including children, are highly allergic to peanuts, wheat, dairy, and other foods, and some critics of GM foods think that GM foods have the possibility to cause and unintentionally introduce new allergies.

2. What if you knew that opponents fear that GM crop technology will hurt small farmers?

a. Critics of GM agriculture insist that patenting genetically altered crops, as agribusiness is rushing to do, will make small farmers indentured to big firms. Monsanto, one of the biggest players in the field, is currently suing dozens of North American farmers whom it claims have raised its patented GM crops without paying for the privilege.

Engineer a Crop

4. Practice this simulation until you get the largest ears of corn. How many times did it take you?
It took me 3 times to get the largest years of corn in 4 seasons.


What’s for Dinner?
5. List two foods and desribe how they are being modified.
Pizza: For each of the ingredients you might find in pizza, including cheese, wheat, green peppers, onions, and tomatoes, scientists are testing GM varieties. They are modifying rennet, a dried extract used to curdle milk for cheese, to speed the cheese-making process, wheat used in bleached flour to be more easily digestible and produce greater yields; and green peppers, onions, and tomatoes to stay fresh longer in supermarkets, resist pests, and survive droughts.

Fruit: Plant geneticists are testing almost any fruit you can think of for your GM variety approval. Strawberries, pears, melons, apples, grapefruit, and watermelons with altered sugar content, fruit ripening cycles, and pests resistance may be hitting your local produce aisle soon.

Viewpoints
Do you think food should be labeled if it has been genetically modified? Why or Why not?

Yes, I think that genetically modified food should be labeled. The FDA refused to require labeling of genetically modified foods, against the advice of its own scientists, and I find that very alarming. Also the FDA put out a political document, not a scientific one, that said that GM foods are no different than naturally grown foods without modifiers, and therefore they don't have to be labeled to even regulated differently. Genetically modified food should be labeled because some people might have allergies to that modifier, or that modifier might cause a disease or a virus and I think that the public deserves to know what they are consuming and what their families are putting in their bodies.

DNA Fingerprinting

Introduction:

1. DNA is unique for everyone. The only exception is if a person has what?
The only exception is identical twins.

2. What are DNA fingerprints used for?
DNA fingerprints can be used for anything from determining a biological mother or father to identifying the suspect of a crime.

Part 1 “It Takes a Lickin”

3. What “crime” was committed?
Some one entered Jimmy's room, opened his holographic lollipop and licked it.

4. What bodily fluid was removed from the “crime scene” to get DNA?
Saliva was removed from the lollipop and taken in for testing.

Part 2 “DNA Fingerprinting at the NOVA Lab”

5. What does a restriction enzyme do?
The restriction enzymes work like scissors and cut the DNA into portions according to the pattern.

6. What is agarose gel?
Agarose gel is a thick, porous, jelly-like substance.

7. What is electrophoresis?
Electrophoresis is the process of moving molecules by using electric currents.

8. Smaller fragments of DNA move ____________ than longer strands?
more easily through the gel

9. Why do you need to place a nylon membrane over the gel?
I placed the nylon membrane over the gel so that the DNA could be absorbed into it.

10. Probes attach themselves to __________
DNA fragments on the membrane.

11. Which chemical in your “virtual lab” is radioactive?
The probes are radioactive.

12. Sketch your DNA fingerprint.

file:///Users/sstahm/Desktop/Screen%20shot%202010-11-24%20at%208.50.20%20AM.png

13. Based on your DNA fingerprint, who licked the lollipop?
According to my DNA fingerprint, Honey licked the lollipop.

14. What kinds of things could you do at the DNA workshop?

You can be moved into a cell and be involved with replication and cell protein synthesis.

15. Read an article about genetics at this site that you might find interesting, or use the "Search" box in the upper right hand corner to search for DNA fingerprinting.

Title of Article

DNA Fingerprinting

Author and Date WebMD Medical Reference from Healthwise April 20, 2009

Epigenetics and the Environment

Identical Twins: Pinpointing Environmental Impacts on the Epigenome
1. The video that we watched was about identical twins and their genetic make up. Identical twins are the same genetically, but their epigenomes are different, it depends on what type of environment the twins are in. One of them might be really healthy and exercise and the other might just sit on the couch and eat junk food and they may be exposed to toxins like smoke. Their epigenome becomes increasingly different with age because their epigenetic tags are in different places, this is caused by the different environments that each twin is in, like I mentioned before.

2. Some environmental factors that influence your epigenome are your diet, stress, exercise, and the types of pollution or different toxins that you are exposed to.

3. Imprinted genes are genes who's expression is determines by the parents that contributed them. Imprinted genes violate the usual rule of inheritance that both alleles in a heterozygote are equally expressed. Genomic imprinting is a genetic phenomenon by which certain genes are expressed in a parent-of-origin-specific manner. It is an inheritance process independent of the classical Mendelian inheritance. Imprinted genes are either expressed only from the allele inherited from the mother.

Your environment, Your Epigenome
1. Some factors that would affect your epigenome would be diet, exercise, and stress. If someone only eats junk food and doesn't exercise then their epigenome would be much different from someone that have a healthy diet and exercises 2-5 times a week. Diet is very important and if you have a bad diet then you will get fat and then you have a greater chance of getting deseases that have to do with your weight like diabetes.

Lick your Rats
1. If the rat has a high- nurturing mother then it does help the rats epigenome. The rat will be more calm later in life due to the high nurturing that its mother gave it. If the rat had a low- nurturing then the rat will be more stressed out later in life and the rat will not be able to deal with stress well.

2. When the mother licks the rat pup and nurtures it then the GR gene is activated.

3. Inside the brain sits a structure called the hippocampus. One job of the hippocampus is to coordinate the body's response to stress. In the hippocampus cells produce a little or a lot of GR protein depending on how much the pup was nurtured. During the "fight or flight" response, the hormone cortisol is released into the blood stream. Cortisol binds GR protein causing the cell to send out calming signals. Rats who have a lot of GR protein relax quickly after stress. Rats with little GR protein remain stressed for much longer.

4. A human mother and a rat mother are the same, except for a rat is furry, but they are the same with how they treat their offspring or their children. A rat mother will lick their child to make them calmer and less stressed, a human mother will do that to but not by licking their kids. A human mother will care for the child, be nice, and feed it and that will help the childs epigenome, and their social and personal levels.

Nutrition and the Epigenome
1. The food we eat affects gene expression by high methyl foods causing major alters in our gene expression as seen in the rats.

2. Yes. They affect the genome of their offspring in ways such as producing enough, or the correct, amount of chemicals or nutrients needed to survive. If the parent is eating unhealthy they may have trouble with doing this and may hurt the development of the offspring.

Epigenetics and the Human Brain
1. More methyl means less rRNA production, which means fewer ribosomes, which means less protein production.

2. DNA methylation stabilize gene expression, which is important for long-term storage of information.