Glyphosate is an herbicide used to kill weeds. It is the main component of a product made by the Monsanto Company called Roundup. Glyphosate kills plants by inhibiting an enzyme in the shikimate pathway called EPSPS. This herbicide is considered safe because animals do not have the shikimate pathway. To sell even more of their herbicide, Monsanto commissioned its plant geneticists to engineer several crop plants, including corn, to be resistant to glyphosate. To do so, the scientists had to introduce an EPSPS enzyme that was resistant to inhibition by glyphosate into crop plants and then test the transformed plants for resistance to the herbicide. Imagine that you are one of these scientists and that you have managed to successfully introduce the resistant EPSPS gene into the corn chromosomes. You find that some of the transgenic plants are resistant to the herbicide, whereas others are not. Your supervisor is very upset and demands an explanation of why some of the plants are not resistant even though they have the transgene in their chromosomes. Draw a picture to help him understand.
Glyphosate is an herbicide used to kill weeds. It is the
main component of a product made by the Monsanto
Company called Roundup. Glyphosate kills plants by inhibiting an enzyme in the shikimate pathway called
EPSPS. This herbicide is considered safe because animals
do not have the shikimate pathway. To sell even more of
their herbicide, Monsanto commissioned its plant geneticists to engineer several crop plants, including corn, to be
resistant to glyphosate. To do so, the scientists had to introduce an EPSPS enzyme that was resistant to inhibition
by glyphosate into crop plants and then test the transformed plants for resistance to the herbicide.
Imagine that you are one of these scientists and that
you have managed to successfully introduce the resistant EPSPS gene into the corn chromosomes. You
find that some of the transgenic plants are resistant to
the herbicide, whereas others are not. Your supervisor
is very upset and demands an explanation of why some
of the plants are not resistant even though they have
the transgene in their chromosomes. Draw a picture to
help him understand.
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