1. GOLDEN RICE Done by: Carey Lim (1) Joey Ong (8) Kui Yan (9) Lau Jing Han (10) Nazihah Husna (16)

2. HOW IT IS DONE It is designed to produce beta-carotene, a precursor of Vitamin A, in the part of rice that people eat, the endosperm. The rice plant can actually naturally produce beta-carotene, which is a carotenoid pigment that occurs in the leaves and is involved in photosynthesis. However, the plant does not normally produce the pigment in the endosperm since photosynthesis does not occur in the endosperm.

3. HOW IT IS DONE Golden rice was created by transforming rice with two beta-carotene biosynthesis genes:  psy (phytoene synthase) from daffodil ( Narcissus pseudonarcissus )  crt1 from the soil bacterium Erwinia uredovora The psy and crt1 genes were transformed into the rice nuclear genome and placed under the control of an endosperm specific promoter so that they are only expressed in the endosperm. The exogenous lyc gene has a transit peptide sequence attached so that it is targeted to the plastid, where geranylgeranyl diphosphate formation occurs.

4. The bacterial crt1 gene was an important inclusion to complete the pathway, since it can catalyze multiple steps in the synthesis of carotenoids, while these steps require more than one enzyme in plants. The end product of the engineered pathway is lycopene, but if the plant accumulated lycopene the rice would be red. Recent analysis has shown that the plant's endogenous enzymes process the lycopene to beta-carotene in the endosperm, giving the rice the distinctive yellow colour for which it is named. HOW IT IS DONE

5. BENEFITS OF GOLDEN RICE Social Benefits – In terms of Health: Golden Rice is capable of providing the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin A (in the form of beta-carotene) in 100g to 200g of rice for children in countries such as India, Vietnam or Bangladesh, which are mostly developing nations.

6. It is also inexpensive, and offers people, up to 50% of the world population who live on rice from morning to evening, a valuable and affordable choice in the fight against malnutrition. Usually, these people eat an extremely limited diet lacking in essentially bodily vitamins, causing many to fall ill to clinical and subclinical Vitamin A Deficiency-related diseases (VAD), which can cause blindness in many children and even death. VAD often occurs as a result of a deficiency of Vitamin A and not the complete lack thereof. Hence, there is no need to consume an unrealistic amount of Golden Rice to make up for the Vitamin A levels in our body. Genetically modifying regular rice to become Golden Rice is likely to have the potential to at least relieve VAD symptoms if not cure it. BENEFITS OF GOLDEN RICE

7. All in all, it acts as a valuable complement to children’s diets and reduces the number of VAD and chronic heart disease cases. Hence, Golden Rice could constitute a major contribution towards sustainable Vitamin A delivery mechanisms. Although a varied and sufficient diet is most important to maintain a healthy body at the end of the day, this is often difficult to achieve due to traditional, geographical and economical limitations. Thus, Golden Rice can be viewed as a step forward in the right direction as it neither creates new dependencies or displaces traditional cuisine, making the best of both worlds in the process where the people can consume food with a good intake of Vitamin A without compromising on other factors. BENEFITS OF GOLDEN RICE

8. ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS Golden Rice can be inserted with a C-4 System gene, where 4 carbon atoms absorbed and used during photosynthesis as opposed to the C-3 System gene in regular rice that only absorbs and uses 3 carbon atoms. In this way, the rice strain will be 33% more efficient at absorbing carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, hence reducing the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

9. CONCERNS: SUFFICIENCY OF VITAMIN A One of these is that golden rice originally did not have sufficient Vitamin A. This problem was solved by the development of new strains of rice. However, there are still doubts about the speed at which Vitamin A degrades once the plant is harvested, and how much would remain after cooking.

10. CONCERNS: GREENPEACE OPPOSITION Greenpeace, a organization for the conservation of the environment, opposes the release of any genetically modified organisms into the environment, and is concerned that golden rice is a Trojan horse that will open the door to more widespread use of GMOs.

11. POTENTIAL PROBLEMS: POVERTY AND LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY Vandana Shiva, an Indian anti-GMO activist, argued that the problem was not that the crop had any particular deficiencies, but that there were potential problems with poverty and loss of biodiversity in food crops. These problems are aggravated by the corporate control of agriculture based on genetically modified foods.

12. By focusing on a narrow problem (vitamin A deficiency), Shiva argued, the golden rice proponents were obscuring the larger issue of a lack of broad availability of diverse and nutritionally adequate sources of food. Other groups have argued that a varied diet containing foods rich in vitamin A such as sweet potato, leafy green vegetables and fruit would provide children with sufficient vitamin A. POTENTIAL PROBLEMS: POVERTY AND LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY

13. THE END.