1. Genetically Modified Organisms
The use of genetic engineered organisms
for pollution abatement
Genetically Modified Organisms
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2. Genetically Modified Food (GM Food)
An abatement to air, water and soil pollution
Genetically Modified Food (GM Food)
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3. What is GM Food?
GM Food – food that have had their genes modified to be resistant against insects that may do harm to them, thus reducing the amount of insecticides and pesticides used.
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4. Advantages of GM Food
Pharmaceutical benefits, vitamin-enhanced grains, and those with amino acids and other nutritional features.
Increases drought and extreme-temperature tolerance
Resistance to a variety of pests and diseases
Increase the amount of food for the world so as to ensure that sufficient food is available.
Reduce the number of herbicides used to control weeds, facilitating minimum tillage or no-tillage farming, reducing soil erosion and surface water contamination.
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5. Disadvantages of GM Food
Environmental implication: “Bt” corn is resistant to corn borers attack, but there are concerns that a Bt-resistant borer may develop.
‘Super weeds’ might develop a resistant against herbicides.
GMO crops may also cross breed with some other closely related species, leading to transgenic pollution.
Loss of genetic resources due to accidental cross breeding.
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7. GM Food in the United States
Case Study
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10. Advantages of GM Food As of 2000, 68% of such crops come from the U.S.
Soybeans and corn in U.S. make out 82% of all GM crops harvested in 2000, in which 74% were modified for herbicide tolerance, 19% with insect pest resistance, and 7% with both herbicide tolerance and pest tolerance.
Acreage of GM crops has increased from approximately 4.3 million acres in 1996 to 109 million acres
Pesticide and herbicide decreased, resulting in increase of yields.
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12. Disadvantages of GM Food
“Transgenic” pollution – Crops pollinated with biotech genes can lose their organic status if they have been cross polluted.
Dangerous on countries that rely highly on agriculture (with most countries pledging against GM food).
Health effects of consumption and at what dose is unknown.
Create a class of insects resistant to it.
Low reduction in terms of use of pesticides – only by 2.5%.
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13. Phytoremediation
Phytoremediation, able to clean up transgenic pollutants.
Few methods to phytoremediation:
- Phytovolatilization Plants take up contaminants from soil and release them as volatile form into the atmosphere through transpiration
- Phytodegradation Complex organic pollutants are degraded into simpler molecular and incorporated into plant tissues to aid plant growth.
- Phytoextraction Use of plant to take up metal contaminants from soil through the absorption by plant roots.
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14. Phytovolatilization
Contaminants move to the leaves and volatilize into the atmosphere.
It is changed and modified along the way.
Water travels from the roots to the leaves along the vascular system of the plant.
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15. Brief Case Study
No plants even to this date; are found with natural ability to
accumulate
or degrade mercury.
Transgenic plants are developed to remove mercury
How?
(Mer B) and (Mer A) are enzymes in bacteria
Responsible for the process,
Converts organic mercury to elemental mercury that is less toxic.
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16. Brief Case Study Mer B converts Mer A then reduced
organic mercury (CH3Hg) to ionic mercury Hg (II),
Mer A then reduced
ionic mercury Hg (II) to the volatile elemental mercury Hg (0)
Genes were introduced in
Arabidopsis thaliana plant.
Yellow Poplar plant
Eastern cottonwood, Populus deltoids
I am going to go through 3 plants that has been modified with the gene that expreses these enzymes.
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17. Brief Case Study Result :
Able to grow on up to 10μM methyl mercury concentrations,
40-times higher than the maximum concentration tolerated by WT seedlings
10-times higher concentrations than plants that express MerB alone
Combining gene resulted in more efficient detoxification of organomercurial compounds than did merB alone
Simply to say the transgenic plant is 40 times more tolerant than the nontransgenic plant
This plant that that expresses the 2 enzyme (MER A AND B) is 10 times more tolerant than the transgenic plant only expresses MER B enzyme
As ive mentioned having 2 enzymes will make the plant 10 time more tolerant than plant that oni express one enymze
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18. Brief Case Study Results:
Transfer of Mer A producing gene to Yellow Poplar plant
Ability to volatilize 10 times more mercury than control plants.
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19. Brief Case Study Eastern cottonwood, Populus deltoids
Another candidate plant used for Phytoremediation.
Modified with Mer A gene.
Transgenic shoots
Grew normally on a medium with 25μM Hg(II)
A concentration which killed wild-type shoots.
In addition, the transgenic plant
Produced up to 4 times more elemental mercury Hg (0) than wild-type plants.
Evidently shows that the plants are capable of transforming mercury to its less toxic form more efficiently.
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20. Brief Case Study Another experiment is carried out in polluted soil
With mercuric ion at a toxic concentration of 400 ppm Hg (II).
By 2 weeks,
All non-transgenic plant had died
While the transgenic cottonwoods were still alive.
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21. Phytodegradation
Enzymes in plant roots break down (degrade) organic contaminants. The fragments are incorporated into new plant material.
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22. Case Study
Trinitrotoluene (TNT)
One of the most persistent and dangerous explosives.
The use and disposal of TNT has
Resulted in the contamination of many sites.
While many plant species that are able to break down TNT in their own tissue, not many can last long in TNT contaminated site.
Affects their growth and development.
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23. Case Study Entereo cloaca, a soil bacterium
was able to utilize ester explosive as its source of nitrogen.
Enzymes produced by this bacterium are
PETN reductase and Nitro-reductase.
Both enzymes degrade TNT into less harmful product.
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24. Case Study
The genes expressing the production of these 2 enzymes are introduced into the plant,
Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum)
When exposed to 0.25 mM TNT
Wild type plant became chlorotic and lose mass
Transgenic plant continue to grow
The transgenic plant are
more resistant to TNT.
metabolized TNT at far greater rate than the control plants.
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25. Plants absorb contaminants through system of roots
Store them in roots
Or transport them up into the stems and leaves
It will carry on absorbing contaminants until it is being harvested
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26. Phytoextraction After the harvest,
After the plants are allowed to absorb the contaminants for some time, they are harvested to either be
Disposed by incineration
Or be composted to recycle metals.
After the harvest,
Soil contain a lower concentration of contaminant.
This growth and harvest cycle is repeated for a number of times to achieve a considerable clean up.
After the process, remediated soil can be put into other beneficial uses.
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27. Transgenic Plant on Phytoextraction
A problem in the use of hyperaccumulator
Do not have enough biomass
& growth rate to be applied in large scale practices.
To resolve this, Phytoextraction can be further improve by
Transferring genetic traits from hyper-accumulator into plants that has high biomass and growth rate.
In this way,
plants with high biomass and growth rate
will also have the ability to take up high quantity of metals.
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28. Transgenic Plant on Phytoextraction
E.g. Poplar and willow
do not accumulate metals to high concentration.
However, they are still effective remediators
because of their deep root system
and biomass.
Hence, they are excellent candidate to be genetically engineered to have traits of hyper-accumulators.
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29. Conclusion
While genetically modified food is known as a way to reduce the amount of pesticides and herbicides that are used in order to abate pollutions like air and water, there is always a slight chance that their might be transgenic plants that may be spun out of this genetically engineering crops.
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30. Conclusion
Phytoremediation, on the other hand, uses transgenic plants to control land pollution, should there be more than the required amount of heavy metals present in the soil
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31. Want to know more? http://knowhowtogmo.wordpress.com/
Includes pollution abatement for Eutrophication, CO2 Emission and more details on what you have seen today.
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32. END NG YONG CHYN TEE JIALENG HIDAYAT ARIFF S10077965B s10079160G
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