In honor of World Hunger Day, the 3000 Rice Genome project released to the public the data set of the sequencing of 3000 rice strains. This is the first step in a project to aid in food safety and hunger in poor parts of the world. The new information will be used to breed new kinds of rice that will be able to grow in many different environment, contain more nutrients, and ultimately help feed the starving. Dr. Robert Zeigler, one of the project's researchers, explained that this new advancement will greatly speed up efforts to solve the incoming problems rice farms are starting to face. One of the biggest issues is the environment in which the farmers are growing the rice. These new strains will help researchers to develop breeds of rice that will withstand the harshest conditions. The project released the new data to the public because they believed that it will take much more research than they can do on their own to solve the problems and hope that other scientists will use the data.
NOS Themes:
Science is collaborative
Science is based on evidence
Link to Article: http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2014/05/29/3000_rice_genome_sequences_made_publicly_available_on_world_hunger_day.html
I think that this article connects to what we were learning in class about biotechnology. This would definitely be one of the pluses to biotechnology. The fact that we can alter a grain into one that has more nutrition and because of this, it helps people amazes me. Genetic engineering also frightens me because who knows what could be in our food?
ReplyDeleteA rice genome project would help out many people in the world. Combined with genetically engineered food this could be the future for the rice production industry. The obviously relates to the GMO learning and debates we did in class and the Human Genome Project work we did. A draft sequence of the rice genome has already been started. The scientists in this article have already sequence 420 megabases
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This is a very interesting article. It is amazing what scientists can do with genomes. They can add vitamins that are not usually there, they can protect their crops from pesticides, and change the color of their food. The side effects of GMO crops have not been seen yet. This craze may be the solution for hunger or will it be the cigarettes are cool movement.
ReplyDeleteArticle: http://gmoinside.org/category/recent-gmo-news/