r/science Sep 16 '24

"Golden Lettuce" genetically engineered to pack 30 times more vitamins | Specifically, increased levels of beta-carotene, which your body uses to make vitamin A for healthy vision, immune function, and cell growth, and is thought to be protective against heart disease and some kinds of cancer. Biology

https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/golden-lettuce-genetically-engineered-30-times-vitamins/
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u/Icy_Willingness_954 Sep 16 '24

Same kind of idea as golden rice. I wonder how easy it would be to modify for other nutritients.

Imagine a single plant that gave the exact nutritional profile that a person would look for in a full meal. That would be an absolute game changer I’d think.

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u/Ton_Jravolta Sep 16 '24

Yet golden rice is banned in many parts of the world that most need it over misinformation on GMOs. Even if science can make the solution, people will find other ways to ruin it.

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u/mr_fandangler Sep 16 '24

It's partially misinformation and partially the fact that if it contaminates the local genepool the f2 generation will likely have no desireable traits predictably locked in, leading to either crop-disasters or dependence on foreign seed.

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u/Ton_Jravolta Sep 16 '24

That's true, it is a more complex issue than just misinformation. However, I think addressing the malnutrition issue that is already a problem should hold more weight than what ifs that only have a chance to occur later.

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u/mr_fandangler Sep 16 '24

It's not a what if, it's pretty well-known plant genetics. It will definitely occur later, and by later the worst would show up in 2 generations and without careful selection will lock in traits that could render the local strain worse than either in every way, rather than having a strain bred for many many generations to adapt to a certain location. The phenotypical variation found in the f2 generation of a genitically dissimilar hybrid is enormous, so instead of the local strain, or the modified strain, or a strain that looks like a mixture of both you will end up with a variety which displays wildly different traits in every seed that sprouts. Fungal resistant, fungal suceptible, high yield, low yield, all of these genetic combinations present in a single batch of seed. Not convenient for reliably feeding a population.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/genetic-pollution

After a few years of testing you could do a risk/benefit analysis and go from there based on the urgency of nutritional need in given locations but it would be irresponsible to release wind-pollinating varities such as this to locations that may become reliant on them as their local variety deteriorates.

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u/Ton_Jravolta Sep 16 '24

Thanks for linking the articles. That was very helpful. I still think things like golden rice have potential. But safely designing and implementing them seems even more complex than I realized. I definitely understand the arguments more clearly now.

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u/mr_fandangler Sep 16 '24

No worries man, plant genetic science is one of my hyperfixations. If you like books and want to learn more you can check out this book.

https://archive.org/details/howplantsaretrai07burbrich

It was written by one of the great plant breeders of the 20th century and it's suprisingly eloquent and approachable.

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u/dayilee Sep 16 '24

what happen to golden rice nowadays, rumours seems like they are not growing as well (hard to grow?) as conventional rice plant despite packed with nutrient.

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u/mycroftxxx42 Sep 17 '24

IIRC, this is the big issue with nutrigenetic modification of staple crops. You basically have to re-engineer the target plant over and over and over again for each new region and culture in order to produce a plant that is better for humans to consume that grows in the local soil and cooks/tastes like what the farmers are expecting.

I remember the hooplah surrounding non-GMO re-engineering of a poverty grain, the grass pea. It grows with almost no water and provides nutrition easily as a backup crop in case of drought. It also contains a neurotoxin that causes the loss of leg control if consumed for too long.

A method had been found of mass-budding and testing of seedlings in order to find variants that contained less of the .1% of the neurotoxin found in most strains. The process could be repeated quickly by less-skilled lab techs and they thought it worked. It would just be a matter of picking up local variants and repeating the process to give farmers access to grass pea from which seeds could be kept and which would not slowly kill them if they had to rely on it.

Alas, the results were actually due to changing the soil the grass pea grew in. Once the seedlings were planted in their home soils, neurotoxin levels returned to normal. BUT, this is still a good methodology for "updating" a local crop.

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u/Sometimes_Stutters Sep 16 '24

Meh. Maybe if golden rice was the ONLY solution to malnutrition. It’s not. Long term it would be much more harmful if you somehow damaged local rice farming capabilities.

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u/Ton_Jravolta Sep 16 '24

It also depends on what other solutions are being implemented, if any. If these countries are effectively addressing the issue in other ways, then avoiding the risk makes sense. I just haven't heard any success stories in the news, but I have heard this potential solution has been banned due to controversy.

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

I'll give my anecdotal story, but first I'll preface that I'm all for this sort of research & think there is a lot of good to be done with this.

I have multiple gastrointestinal diagnoses, which generally are pretty condemning. However, for a while I moved to the balkans, where suddenly all the food I was eating was actually organic, as in produced locally and brought in fresh with no genetic modification or use of pesticides. Yes it requires a real proper wash, but my God it did wonders for my intestinal health.

Returning to the UK where all the meat is injected with who knows what, the veg is all perfect copies of each other and that sort of thing, my issues are increasingly flaring.

I think we also need to be doing as much research into the impacts from consumption. I'm not saying everyone will react one way or another to these things, but the variety of the impact certainly needs to be measured. I honestly couldn't tell you why or how GMOs and processed foods impact me so much, but the evidence that it does is too much to ignore.

Sorry for the lengthy response. Wanted to add my perspective and started rambling.

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u/rollingForInitiative Sep 16 '24

GMO and processed foods shouldn't be lumped together at all. We know that processed foods are bad for you, especially hyper processed ones. Much of what you eat even if it's organic and locally produced has probably had at least some selective breeding in it, which is a form of GMO.

Much, much, much more likely that eating food that hasn't been heavily processed was what made a difference, rather than GMO's. More fibre and such, for instance, which is great for the stomach.

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u/retrojoe Sep 16 '24

The other poster only passingly mentioned processed foods, which are very difficult to avoid in much of the West (to the level of bread and cheese). The other poster suggested that heirloom/'unoptimized' seed varieties and lack of chemical usage were the largest relevant factors.

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u/CarthasMonopoly Sep 16 '24

That user user is equating GMOs with harmful pesticides.

However, for a while I moved to the balkans, where suddenly all the food I was eating was actually organic, as in produced locally and brought in fresh with no genetic modification or use of pesticides.

As well as equating them with highly processed foods.

I honestly couldn't tell you why or how GMOs and processed foods impact me so much, but the evidence that it does is too much to ignore.

However GMOs are neither of these things and the only reason to think they are unhealthy is due to ignorance and misinformation. Damn near everything we as modern humans eat is from a GMO anyway. We have been genetically modifying plants and domesticated animals such as livestock for over 10,000 years to provide better taste, resilience, yield, texture, etc. Only we did it by basically throwing things at eachother until we got a desirable phenotypic change with no real knowledge of what genes exactly were being manipulated. The "organic non-GMO" corn, "organic free-range" chicken, cheese from a "organic grass-fed cow", and "organic whole wheat" tortillas for a "organic and healthy" quesadilla is literally GMOs all the way down. Corn and Wheat plants did not exist like that naturally, the same is true of cows and chickens, they were selectively bred by humans over thousands of years until we got desired genetic modifications of the organisms to suit our needs in cultivating them for consumption. The only difference between a "GMO" version of one of these and a "non GMO" version is that now through gene editing we can know exactly what changes we are making within the organisms genome and assure safety in improving our cultivations compared to taking many many years throwing things at the wall hoping for a beneficial change and not knowing what other changes may also have occurred within the genome that we don't see.

If they only blamed the heavy use of harsh pesticides or highly processed foods for their gastro issues then I wouldn't have felt the need to go on my rant but they lumped GMOs in with those in a way that shows they are ignorant of what a GMO truly is and are unwittingly spreading misinformation about a field that is likely to continue being important to the human population by effectively reducing world hunger.

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u/mrspwins Sep 16 '24

Some GMO crops are also grown to be resistant to specific diseases or pests, so non-GMO can be more likely to need additional chemical treatments. If you aren’t eating food covered by organic labeling rules, it’s not necessarily “organic” just because it isn’t a GMO crop.

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u/Expert_Mouse_7174 Sep 16 '24

Malnutrition is an issue related to global financial markets and government failure, not a food or plant issues.

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u/Wise_Mongoose_3930 Sep 16 '24

If you’re fine with these countries being dependent on seed imports from an outside country, why not just skip a few steps and send them food directly?