Practise agricultural GMO questions by linking engineered traits to food quality and yield, then interpreting farm data and weighing environmental and social consequences.
It has been hypothesised that the mutation rate of an animal species may affect how fast animals of that species age and how long they live (lifespan).
Table 7.1 compares the mutation rate and lifespan of five species of mammal.
Table 7.1
Genetic engineering could be used to improve farmed animals, such as dairy cattle. State two features of dairy cattle that could be improved by genetic engineering.
Give two advantages of genetically engineering herbicide resistance in crop plants such as soybean.
In 1973, a technique for genetic engineering was used for the first time. Recombinant DNA was made using a plasmid and this was successfully transferred into an organism.
In 2012, a new technique for genetic engineering, called gene editing, was developed.
Camelina sativa is a fast-growing plant with oil-rich seeds.
C. sativa grows in dry and poor soils and so it may be important as a food crop in the future. The oil from its seeds has a high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids. This shortens the time that the oil can be stored for, which is a disadvantage.
Scientists used gene editing to develop two types of C. sativa with different genetic changes. The gene edited C. sativa seeds produced oil with longer storage times.
Fig. 4.1 shows the percentage composition of fatty acids in the oil extracted from seeds of gene edited and wild type (not gene edited) C. sativa.
Fig. 4.1
With reference to Fig. 4.1, discuss the social benefits of this example of gene editing.