Draft #16

I'd heard of round up before but I never fully understood it and its use of GMOs. Round up relied on an edited pathway in plants that contained a single monomer that was altered in the pathway to produce three amino acids. The genetically modified plants were designed to have a new DNA sequence that yielded that same intermediate protein to produce the three amino acids but it was resistant to binding with the round up chemical that degraded the intermediate to prevent the amino acid synthesis. This meant that unedited plant genomes would produce a protein that round up would attack, killing the plant. The crops and plants of interest that the farmers grew were controlled GMOs that would not be affected by this deadly chemical because it could not bind to their intermediate proteins, but the amino acids were still successfully synthesized. This sounds great but I see potential problems this could cause. Firstly, if there is any possibility of cross-pollinating with a related species, this genetically modified sequence could find itself in an uncultivated species that could become very invasive with the use of the round up. Any transfer of the gene could cause superweeds that are immune to roundup. Also, this plathway is in many plants, making it an effective weed killer, but highly unspecialized. It could easily target species that do not compete with the crops when roundup goes deeper into the soil or runs off into streams, etc. This makes the roundup chemical highly dangerous in the use ouside a closed system like a greenhouse. Furthermore, the roundup company had a monopoly on the "roundup ready" species, meaning the genetically modified organisms that were resistant to roundup. This made the project extremely capitalistically driven, like a lot of projects, and shows a comflict of interests. They were selling the locks and the keys, which was an extremely successful business model and that high sale rate might have affected the attention to affect of roundup on the environment. People in charge would more apt to turn a blind eye until forced to look when great deals of money are involved.