 All right. So we are going to discuss GMOs and I have to admit this is a talk that's a little out of character for me. I normally talk more about gardening and about ornamental plant material, but I feel like there is a real need for information on GMOs or genetically modified organisms. So we have individuals that are making decisions based on emotion rather than than the facts. So I'm hoping today to provide you with some scientific information that will help you understand GMOs and will help you make your own decisions, whether you will be consuming GMOs or not. Just to share with you, I'm Esther McGuinness, and I find that when I give a talk on a topic that may be a little on the controversial side, it helps for people to know who I am and what my biases are. So we can all just be very transparent and unequal footing. So I do have a master's and PhD in applied plant sciences from the University of Minnesota, and my emphasis was horticulture, but I also have a law degree. So this gives me a little bit of a unique perspective on GMOs, and I have published in this area. Now currently I am the NDSU Extension Horticulturist and Director of the Master Gardener Program. So a lot of people want to know, well, if I'm talking about GMOs, do I have ties to big agriculture or do I have ties to the organic industry? And the answer is neither. I don't really have ties to big agriculture. All of my funding comes through the North Dakota Department of the A through their specialty crop block grant program. So I really don't do much of agronomy, which means that I'm not necessarily, I'm not beholden to any corporations. And on the other hand, I don't receive any funding for organic production. So this leaves me to be free and independent and report the science the best that I can. At the same time, I am a mom. So I am careful about what I feed my family and I want to make sure that they're getting the best quality of food and making sure that there are no health risks associated with that food. For a lot of people, you know, they hear the term GMO and they don't really know what it is. GMO stands for genetically modified organism. And this is a term that I'm not very fond of because I don't think it tells us very much. Everything is genetically modified. If you had children, your children would be genetically modified organisms because their genetics would not be the same as either parrot. It would be a brand new combination. However, that's the term that we commonly use. So I'll be referring to GMOs, but I will also be referring to genetic engineering as a synonym. And we've got a couple definitions on the screen. The first is through the Cartagena protocol on biosafety. GMO is any living organism that possesses a novel combination of genetic material obtained through the use of modern biotechnology. Well, you may be questioning, well, what is a novel combination? Well, the next definition helps a little bit. This is the definition that is put forth by the USDA. The USDA does not use the term GMO. Instead, it uses the term genetic engineering. And it defines it as the genetic modification of organisms by recombinant DNA techniques. So what we've learned so far is that we've got a novel combination of genetic material and that there's recombinant DNA techniques. Well, I can make this a little bit clearer with an example. This is Liberty Link Corn. So Liberty Link Corn is a little special because it has a gene that makes it resistant to an herbicide called glufosinate. So glufosinate is the active ingredient and it's a broad spectrum herbicide. One of the trade names for it is Liberty. So this means when we grow Liberty Link Corn, we can spray glufosinate at recommended rates in the field and not kill the corn, but we will instead kill the weeds. So this is a beneficial trait. But the interesting thing is where did we get the gene for that herbicide tolerance? The gene for that herbicide tolerance came from a couple species of bacteria. So this is what we mean by having a novel combination and obtaining genes through recombinant DNA technology. So we're able to take genes from completely different species and incorporate it into the genome of corn. Now at this point, there are some people that have a negative reaction once they learn what a GMO is. And in fact, one of the nicknames is franken food. And that's because we are able to take genes and take them from an entirely different kingdom. We can go outside the plant kingdom. We can take genes from animals, viruses, fungi, bacteria, and then incorporate that into our crop. And this creates a lot of anxiety in people. And frankly, I don't blame them. If I didn't have a scientific background, I might be a little more nervous than I am about such a thing. I do have one interesting slide here which talks about how we perceive risk and really the sorts of risks that drive our anxiety. And this is derived from research from Paul Slavik, which was published in the mid-1980s. And it was all about how we perceive risk. You know, what risks or what events do we perceive as causing more dread for us? What are some other risks that are more familiar and really don't get us worked up? If you look at this chart, you'll see that as we slide, if you can see my pointer, as we slide down the x-axis to the left side, we have risks that are more controllable. So these are things we rate as being under our control. On this side, we really don't get as upset about these risks. As we move down the x-axis to the right side, these are risks that are more uncontrollable and may create more anxiety for us. Whether that's justified is up for debate. I know that, you know, we've got plane crashes down here and then car accidents are much further to the left on the spectrum. I know that every time I get on a plane, I experience a little twinge of anxiety before we take off. And I impute that to the feeling of a lack of control. So I feel more nervous on the plane because I'm not flying it, which is probably a good thing. But I feel more anxiety on the plane compared to being in my car just because of that control element. But we all know that you stand more of a risk of being in a car accident than in a plane crash. But that still doesn't necessarily take away from my anxiety. So looking at the y-axis, we have risks that tend to be more familiar towards the bottom. As we go towards the top, we're increasing in novelty. As we go up the y-axis to the top, these are risks that are unknown and less familiar. Now, would you be surprised if I told you that people perceive the risks in the lower left-hand quadrant as producing less anxiety for them? So we've got smoking, alcohol addiction, motorcycle accidents, accidents on bicycles. So this quadrant is perceived as producing less anxiety and this quadrant produces more of a feeling of dread. And that's because these risks seem to be beyond our control and we know less about them. So even way back in 1987 DNA technology was producing more anxiety in the people that were pulled as opposed to dying from smoking or lung cancer or any of these other risks. So that's kind of an interesting finding. Now today, I want to help you. I want to make you feel more familiar with the science behind genetics and genetic engineering. So I'm going to give you a little bit of a primer here. I'm not an instructor in genetics. So this will probably be more at an eighth grade level, which is probably good because we've got a very general audience today. So I'll be talking more in lay person's terms. So everybody's familiar with DNA and really this is our genetic blueprint. So it's like having a set of architectural blueprints in each and every cell and it's in the nucleus of the cell. Now our DNA composes the chromosomes we have. Now if you scale down and just look at a small sequence of DNA, that's what we call a gene. And then each gene provides the code for producing proteins and RNA. So really the proteins do a lot of the work at the cellular level. Now DNA is really interesting because it's like a universal code. This is what allows us to take a gene from a bacteria or from an animal and put it into another unrelated organism. It's because this code is the same. So I liken it a little bit to a computer code. So computer code is binary. Everything is coded as a zero or as a one. And that's what the computer reads. Well DNA is a little more complex because it has four, four letters, A, T, C, and G. So that's what makes up the DNA. Now as you look at the DNA on the right hand side, it looks like a ladder. So we have two of these, what I call nucleotides that form the rung or the step of each ladder. And then we have sugar molecules that form the edges here. So you'll see that our four nucleotides are adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. And they have strict pairing rules. Adenine, if it occurs on this side, will always match up with thymine. If thymine is on this side, it will always match up with adenine. And the same holds true for guanine and cytosine. They always pair up. So this, this is what DNA looks like in humans, in chimpanzees, in viruses, and in plants. It's all going to look very similar because we all use the same base code. So we have, we have our ladder here. And then when we get three letters in a row that codes for an amino acid, and then there are 20 combinations possible. There's some redundancy. So there are 20 amino acids that we can make in ourselves. The amino acids are like pearls on a string or on a necklace. We string them together and make proteins. But what to keep in mind here is that DNA is this universal code that goes beyond the organism. Now if we look at the genome, and the genome would be the entire complement of DNA, and we've got a lot of different rungs on the ladder. So E. coli would have 4.6 million base pairs. So remember that's that pairing of those two nucleotides. Going all the way up to 16.8 billion in wheat. If we look at the number of genes, we'll see that a fruit fly has 14,000 genes. Humans are a little more complex. We've got 21,000. And then corn and wheat surprisingly are more complex than humans. They have 33 and 95,000 genes. The wheat genome is just very, very interesting and very complex. So that's a little primer on genetics and just understanding what's going on. So this will help you understand genetic engineering or genetic modification. So in genetic engineering, we look for a beneficial gene. That gene can be in almost any species as long as it's beneficial. So we can look for a crop gene like insect resistance. Now that helps us because then we don't have to spray as much insecticide or herbicide tolerance. Or in apples, we can look for the gene that will slow down browning in an apple. Now as I mentioned that gene can be from a different species. But once we know where that gene is, we can use an enzyme. So every time I mentioned the word enzyme in this presentation, think scissors, think cutting. An enzyme can be used to cut the DNA segment out of the gene. We then copy it. We have to insert some DNA material at the beginning of the gene and at the end of the gene. The material at the beginning of the gene helps turn on the gene. The material at the end terminates it. We then put on a marker so that we can eventually find where the gene was incorporated into a plant cell. We have two options for incorporating a gene of interest into a plant cell. The first is using a bacteria. This is a very commonly found soil bacteria called agribacterium tumorfations. This actually causes crown gall in apple trees, grape vines, and in roses. But it has a very unique mechanism. It has the ability to insert its DNA into the plant and essentially instruct the plant to do certain things. So we are using the soil-borne bacterium, but we have taken the disease-causing components out of it. So we start off with a circular piece of DNA called a TDNA. We take an enzyme. We make a cut in the TDNA. We insert a gene of interest there. We seal it up. We put it back in the bacteria. Then we use the bacteria to take the gene and insert it into a plant cell. We then grow those plants in tissue culture under very sterile conditions, and eventually we're able to regenerate that plant cell into an entire plant. So that's how we do genetic engineering using bacteria. We have another method called the gene gun. The gene gun takes little particles, usually tungsten, and coats it with the DNA material. And then we shoot it into the plant cell. Now this may be a little less accurate than the bacterial method, because sometimes we end up with multiple copies of the gene in a cell. However, the gene gun is more likely regulated than the soil-borne bacteria. And we'll come back to that. Now at this point you may be, whoa, are we playing God here? Well, yes we are. But we've been doing that for 10,000 years. We have been manipulating plant genetics as far as we can document. And the first example would be corn. So corn is really interesting. Corn is not what you think it is. Corn started out as Tia Sinte. So this is Tia Sinte here. It actually looked more like a grass 10,000 years ago. So this is native to southern Mexico. So we had some prehistoric farmers that started the process of changing the genetics. So they would grow Tia Sinte and they would select for certain characteristics. So they would save the seed from plants that had certain mutations. Now with the Tia Sinte you've got a single row of kernels and then a very hard seed coat. Furthermore, Tia Sinte shatters, meaning that the seeds fall off, that rachis, and then are lost. But over time we started building something that looked more like a corn cob. So the middle picture right here, we're starting to see multiple rows. We're still seeing a little bit of that hard seed coat. But over time, somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years, we were able to produce corn as we know it today. Now I'll provide you with another horticultural example. This is Brassica oleraceae. This is wild cabbage. This is the pregenitor of broccoli, cabbage, coles, I'm sorry, col-robi, and some of these other species. So this is the ancestor. This is found in Europe, in the northern part of Europe, all the way down into some of the Mediterranean countries. So we have been changing wild cabbage for thousands of years. Probably the first crop that came from wild cabbage was kale. So we were able to choose plants that looked like it had very nice, tender leaves and leaves that were a little bit curlier. And in fact, we were able to find references to kale and Greek and Roman literature, so we know it's been around a long time. Cabbage. Cabbage also came from wild cabbage, but we were selecting for something different. Here humans were selecting for more of a head type of trait, so we would have leaves that would fold in on each other in that tight head. We're not entirely sure where cabbage came from. It could have Celtic origins or it could have Greek origins. We do know it was mentioned thousands of years ago. Likewise, we have Kohl-robi. So Kohl-robi has been around at least since the mid-1500s and Brussels sprouts. Now what humans selected for in Kohl-robi is that nice, fleshy stem. With our Brussels sprouts, they were looking for that for a little tiny, or they were looking for an enlarged bud that occurred right above the leaf. With our broccoli and our cypress, now they've been around for many centuries. Broccoli comes from an inflorescence, I should say, from immature flower primordia, as does cauliflower. So really we just selected and we shaped this plant. And they're all extremely closely related. In fact, they're all the same species. But we were not done with brassicas. We, in fact, bred a new crop in the early 1990s called broccolini. So this was a cross between two subspecies within that species. So broccoli was a parent and then Gailan, which is called Chinese broccoli, was the other parent. And here we have a new product, which really isn't that old. So we have been changing plant material throughout history and we continue to do so. So strawberries. Strawberries are kind of interesting because the strawberries that you eat are really on the product of chance. What happened is we had a Frenchman who had a garden, now the French loved, and they still love strawberries. He happened to have germplasm from two different continents. He was able to get germplasm from the city of, the country of Chile, and Chile was known for having a species that had big, beautiful berries. In this same garden, the gardener had obtained friguria virginiana, which is a North American wild strawberry. And those are those little tiny strawberries, but oh, they've got flavor and they're hearty. Well, he had both of these in his garden. And then there must have been a pollinator that carried pollen from one species to the other. And we ended up with a hybrid that became the parent of the modern strawberry. Our methods now have become a little bit more precise in how we breed and modify plants. Now the most common way is crossbreeding, where we cross two sexually compatible species to produce progeny or offspring that have beneficial traits from both parents. But I have to admit this is much less precise than genetic engineering. So we take parent one. So parent one has a suite of traits that are, that are considered to be excellent, but parent one may be missing something important, like a disease resistance trait. So we then cross parent one that has the desired trait. We do this, you know, by the application of pollen. And this is all done conventionally. What happens is that we're probably not done at this stage, that one crossing is not going to be enough because we have carried all this genetic material from parent two. And as a result, we've had kind of this, it's really all up to chance as to what was inherited in this process. So then we need to try and clean it up, get back to that package of traits that was in parent one, but making sure we have disease resistance. We do this by repeated back crossing to parent one. Now we have other methods of conventional breeding that we use to introduce new traits mutation breeding we've been using since the 1930s, and there've been thousands of varieties produced this way. Now the whole object of mutation breeding is to induce mutations. So we use radiation or chemicals to do this. We expose the seed to radiation or chemical. So we then grow out needs and hopefully find a phenotype or trait that's desirable. This is what we have done in semi dwarf rice. So 50% of the rice grown in California is the product mutation breeding. If you eat a ruby red grapefruit that ruby red color came from this came from this process. I want to reassure you, you're not eating anything that's been irradiated. It was just the original seed. So there's really no risk involved here. But barley, wheat, pears, peas, cotton, peppermint, sunflowers, peanuts, bananas and other crops have all been improved through this type of process. We have polyploidy. We use this to produce seedless watermelon. Now this is done through a chemical. We have, if I could have somebody mute the microphone, please, I'm getting a lot of a lot of sounds coming through. So if you can mute your microphone, please, that would be helpful. Thank you. So with polyploidy, watermelon normally is what we consider 2M. This means it has two sets of chromosomes. We can treat it with a chemical called colchicine to double the ploidy. And we commonly do this with ornamental plants too, using colchicine. Now with watermelon, so we had a plant with two sets of chromosomes and another one with four sets of chromosomes. We were able to breed those two together to end up with a triploid plant, which was sterile and seedless. So that's how we were able to get seedless watermelon. Now another method that's being used probably more by China than by the United States now is protoplast fusion. Now this can be used to fuse together the contents of cells from two species that normally cannot be crossed. We digest the cell walls of both cells and then we combine the DNA and are able to come up with a hybrid. So my whole point here is that we do a lot of different crop modification techniques. This is really just scratching the surface. There are a lot of new breeding techniques out there that we're using. But I'm curious, how many of these techniques do you think are regulated? So if you can answer in the chat box, I'd love to hear what your guesses are. So we've talked about crossbreeding, mutation breeding, talked about polyploidy protoplast fusion, and then transgenesis is another name for genetic engineering or genetic modification. For now, just ignore the genome editing. Anybody want to guess which one or several of these techniques are in fact regulated? Okay, so we've got none, and then Kathy Christiansen says two. Well, if we averaged zero and two, oh, we got Annie saying all. Really the only technique that is currently being regulated by the United States government is genetic engineering. So transgenesis or I should say genetic engineering or genetic modification is the only technique that is regulated. So how in fact is this regulated? Well, we have a coordinated framework that was developed in the 19 or the late 1980s and largely has not changed very much. So we have three governmental entities that regulate GM crops. The first is the USDA with Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service, and they regulate the growing of crops. So they oversee field testing, making sure everything is monitored, making sure that we don't have gene flow, and then overseeing whether that crop can be deregulated and sold on the market. The EPA regulates plant incorporated protectants. Well, you know the government, they've got to make up a term for it, but they're essentially regulating a subset of plants that produce insecticides like BT corn or BT cotton would be an example. That would fall under EPA regulation. And then the FDA Food and Drug Administration regulates food and feed safety. Now, in all in all, it's a very costly process to go through deregulation. It generally costs 100 to $130 million. As a result of the heavy costs, only the largest corporations can in fact employ genetic engineering or genetic modification. And we'll talk about the ramifications of that as we go through the rest of the presentation. Now this is part of the Field to Fork series, so I wanted to talk about whether you're eating GMOs and what the safety ramifications are. So do you eat GMOs on a regular basis? I would say probably most of you do. That's because 90% of the US crop acreage in corn, soybean, cotton, canola and sugar beet is genetically engineered. So we have corn syrup. Every time you drink a pot, that's genetically engineered. Cornmeal, soybeans, so anytime you have soy protein in a product or you're consuming soybean oil. Now we have cotton seed and canola oils also on the market. And then a large portion of our sugar, I would say well over 90% of sugar beets in North Dakota and Minnesota are genetically engineered. So those are ready sugar beets. So those are processed foods. Well what about when you're in the produce aisle? Can you buy a whole food? Can you buy a piece of fruit or a vegetable that's genetically engineered? Well there's a small quantity of squash or green zucchini that's on the market that is genetically engineered. And the trait that it expresses is resistance to cucumber mosaic virus, which is a very lethal disease to the plants. So that is available, but I would say it's just a very small portion of what's in the produce aisle. And then we're starting to see more roundup ready sweet corn. I think that's more likely to be found at farmers markets, but I don't necessarily know the supply chain with respect to sweet corn. Now regarding fruit, I have to tell you papaya is my all time favorite fruit. I cannot get enough of papaya. So every time I traveled to Hawaii, I just eat gobs and gobs of this. And I'm happy to eat the genetically engineered versions because that's what has kept papaya alive in Hawaii. Papaya back in the 1990s was suffering from a very bad virus called papaya ring spot virus and it almost killed the native papaya industry. Now there were a couple of scientists that were able to take the seed coat protein from the virus and make papaya resistant to that devastating disease. And in some senses, maybe it's a little like vaccination. So papaya is still around because of genetic engineering, and we may find the same to be true with our citrus industry. Our citrus industry is dying because of the combination of an insect and a disease. So we've got a vector, an insect vector that spreads a very devastating disease to oranges and other citrus. And right now they're working on genetic engineering of oranges so we can continue to still grow oranges in North America. We've got a two new crops that have recently been deregulated by the USDA. There's innate potato. This potato has four different traits to it. Two of them benefit the grower and two of them benefit consumers. So that's a little bit different. So the two traits that benefit consumers, it's less likely to bruise. And then secondly, it's less likely to produce acrylamide. Now in the past, there were some concerns that if you fried a potato, it would produce acrylamide and that acrylamide could cause cancer. So there was, there really was an incentive to create a potato that produced less acrylamide. This potato also has another characteristic in that it is resistant to late blight. So less fungicide needs to be applied to this crop. Now I don't know how much markets share or whether this is really is really being grown much in North America. It's too new for us to really know. So I have definitely not seen this one at the grocery store, but we may in the future. Arctic, there's the Arctic series of apples that have been deregulated in particular golden apple. So this is really interesting. This uses something called gene silencing to make an apple that doesn't brown. So anytime you cut a normal apple, it's exposed to oxygen that goes through a process called oxidation and turns brown. We now have an apple that will not brown. So theoretically the processing industry could cut up apples and put them in a bag and sell them in the refrigerated section. So I believe you're going to start seeing this relatively soon. We don't know if it's going to be accepted by consumers. This is this is definitely the apple that you would use if you were making a fruit salad. So everybody always asks about the health risks of GMOs. Have they been studied? Well, they have been studied. This is GMOs are probably some of the most heavily studied crops anywhere. And this is reflected by a letter written by 129 Nobel Prize winners in 2016. This is a letter they sent to Greenpeace and other environmental organizations. So the Nobel Prize winners wrote scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment and a boon to global biodiversity. Now, some of you may have found, you know, a couple studies online that try and document a negative health come health outcome. But what has happened in those cases is that those were not peer reviewed journal articles. So we're looking at the hard science in order, in order for there to be a confirmed case, it would have to then been accepted for publication by, by, by a reputable journal, and that really has not happened. And we have not had any truly documented cases of human or animal, animal harm, and, and billions of animals have consumed, you know, round up ready soybeans round up ready alfalfa, and there has been no health risks shown. Our US National Academy of Sciences did a big meta study in 2016. They looked at over a thousand studies of GMOs, this include their environmental effects as well as health risks. And the committee could not find persuasive evidence of adverse health effects directly attributable to consumption of GE foods. Kevin Fulta is from the University of Florida, the University of Florida, and he's a popular writer on the subject, and he wrote this is what I call the frank and food paradox. Transgenic or genetic modification in the lab is the least invasive. It is the most well understood, yet it is the one most shunned by those that oppose biotech. Now if we unpack that statement, you would find that genetic modification is much more precise, we're only taking one to three genes and incorporating it. So we're actually messing with the genome less than with those other modification techniques that I talked about. So crossbreeding can involve tens of thousands of genes, and there could be there could be risks associated with conventional breeding. And that leads us to Linnape potato. This is a potato. This is not genetically engineered. It was conventionally bred for the potato chip industry. Now if you're familiar with potato chips, you know that you want that beautiful golden color, you don't want a potato chip that looks like it's starting to burn. In order to get that even golden color, you need to have the right proportion of starch and sugars. And Linnape potato, it was perfect. It browned absolutely beautifully. However, when the researchers went to eat the Linnape potato, they were overcome with nausea because they had consumed high amounts of solanine. Solanine is a toxin that can occur in potatoes. And in fact, you've probably seen this, if you have had potatoes that were near the surface of the soil and that were exposed to sun, the potatoes then turn green. So that's why we tell people don't eat a green potato because it has toxins in it. Well, with the Linnape potato, it didn't matter how deep, how much soil there was piled on top of that potato, it still had way too much solanine. So it never then came to market. But the point here is that there's risks everywhere. There can be risks from GM products, but similarly there can be risks from conventionally bred potatoes. However, GM crops have been thoroughly vetted and that should give us a little bit of reassurance. GMOs are also analyzed as to whether they contain allergens. Now, scientists were not always so smart with this, way, way back in the beginning of GMOs. We had scientists that took a gene of interest from a Brazil nut, and then they were going to use it, I think in soybean or corn. I can't remember the crop. Now the crop was only going to be fed to cattle, but they were afraid that maybe a human could consume this. So this product never made it to market. And now we're a lot more careful. So the Food and Drug Administration makes sure that any genetically modified food is tested for allergens and toxicity. In general, scientists make sure that they're not taking a gene from a known allergen. So we're not taking a gene from peanuts or tree nuts or shrimp or anything that can cause an allergy or food allergy in humans. Well, where are we headed with this? I would say that the heavy regulation of genetically modified crops is really causing a revolution. So keep in mind that it costs 100 to $130 million to regulate GM crops. This means that only the richest corporations can afford to use genetic engineering. So what has happened is that university researchers, small corporations have been effectively excluded from using this technology. So started looking for loopholes in regulation. One of those is illustrated by our Roundup Ready Kentucky bluegrass. What they have done there is what we call cisgenesis, not transgenesis, but cisgenesis. They have taken all of the DNA from plants. They're no longer taking sequences from viruses and bacteria. And if they use a gene gun, they can then escape regulation. So I have to admit on this Roundup Ready Kentucky bluegrass, I am not a fan of it. I think we have enough herbicide tolerant crops on the market. I'm very hesitant to, I would be very hesitant to have more of them because I do worry about weed resistance. So this product exists, but it has not been marketed and I'm very glad it hasn't because I would hate to see more Roundup being used in the environment because this could then lead to more Roundup resistant weeds. And I think is a very good herbicide, I would hate to see that we lose it by overuse. So this is an example of where we've used a loophole to not to escape regulation. Another thing that's happened is that universities have said, you know what, I'm going to create my own technology, one that's less invasive and less likely to be regulated. So this is what we have with CRISPR or Cas9. So university researchers found what we call a genome editing system. And they found it in bacteria. So they noticed that bacteria when exposed to a virus would cut little short pieces of DNA from the virus for the purposes of being able to recognize that virus. So if they ever came in contact with that virus again or were attacked by the virus, they'd be able to recognize the DNA from the virus, and then utilize an enzyme to cut the viruses DNA and deactivate it. So researchers have then taken the enzyme. Remember enzymes are tiny little scissors to cut to cut a double strand of RNA. So they use a guide sequence that directs the enzyme to where it needs to cut the DNA. We can delete, we can delete some rungs on that DNA ladder, or we can do something called hacking to turn a gene on or off. But the interesting thing is that this can be done very quickly and done very cheaply. So you're going to start seeing a lot of products being released that were the product of CRISPR-Cas9. And for the time being, this technology is not regulated because we're not taking a foreign gene anymore. We're not taking a gene from bacteria or virus and inserting it. Instead, we're just making a couple of snips in the DNA and then manipulating the gene to turn it on or off. So this is the future. I know that GMOs have created a lot of anxiety and a lot of controversy, but CRISPR in the future may very likely replace genetic engineering. Now the question is whether CRISPR at some point may be regulated. That I don't know, but this is an active conversation that we're going to have to have as a society. So that's my talk on GMOs. And I would invite any questions that you have. So remember we're all among friends. Go ahead and feel free to ask your questions and I'll look in the chat box here. All right, so what happens to the GMO and hybrid traits if you plant the seed from the GMO hybrid plant? Well, that GMO can persist. So it does persist in the cells of that plant. For example, in fact, that's what we want to have. If we plant Liberty Link corn, that gene is in the plant and that's what enables it to have herbicide tolerance. So it does stay in that plant. So I hope that answers your question, Dick. Is there anybody else that has questions or comments? And you're welcome to turn on your microphones. All right, good. So we're starting to get some questions in from Angie. Would the Arctic Golden Apple have to have a sticker that said it was genetically modified? And how do you think the general public would feel about that? At this time, the Arctic Golden Apple would not have to have any sort of label. We have not passed federal labeling requirements for GMOs. I think the argument to date has been that there really is no concern about safety, so in fact, they don't have to carry that sticker. Now, how do I think the general public would feel about that? Well, this will be an interesting test case. We don't necessarily know how the public is going to react. Some people may be accepting, others may not, but this is really one of the very first products that is consumer-based. All the other GMO traits have been geared towards the producer to help them with crop production, like herbicide tolerance, insecticide tolerance, et cetera. But Golden Apple is the first one that has traits that are beneficial to consumers. So it's really going to be a test case and it'll be interesting to see if it's accepted. I really don't know what's going to happen because based on surveys that have been done by Pew, they found that a lot of people are very skeptical about GMOs. So we don't know if the Arctic Golden Apple will in fact achieve a significant market share. From LM Monsky, are GM varieties found in foods that claim to be organic? No. By definition, organic foods cannot be genetically modified that is prohibited. So I would say that they are not commonly found in organic. Can there be some gene flow from crop to crop? Maybe a little, but I don't think very much happens. Now when we have seed production, I know they institute several miles between breeding plots. So they try and make sure that there's no gene flow from genetic modified crops to organic seeds. So by definition, organic crops are not supposed to contain GMOs. Oops. All right. So I think I lost. All right. So I'm scrolling through the questions. I think someone should create a movie like the new seed, the untold movie. It must really explain GMOs for everyone. It should be artistic, easy to understand like this talk. Well, thank you very much for that compliment. There is a new documentary out and I have not had a chance to see it. It's narrated by, oh, I can't remember his name. But it's called Food Evolution and I've not had a chance to see that yet, but I would like to. So there really is a good documentary out there. So if you get a chance, you know, it's good to see that. So Annie, I think GMOs getting a bad rap. Esther, you have helped me to understand this has been going on for a long time and that GMO foods we eat every day. Thank you. Tara. Well, thank you, Tara. I'm glad that that you have enjoyed this. Oh, I see Julie Garden Robinson is on. We must have internet restored to NDSU campus. So I'm glad we were able to do this webinar. Sorry for all of the the interruptions and I want to thank True North Steel for their technical support. I ran over to where my husband works at True North Steel so that we could have this field to fork presentation because we did not have internet on the NDSU campus. So the people worried about GMOs killing our butterflies just do not understand the process. Well, Marlene, that gets us into some of the environmental effects of like BT corn. In the beginning there was some concern that monarch butterflies would then be exposed to the BT produced by BT corn. So there's still a little bit of concern there but we are, I should say, scientists are actively remedying that we have something called refuge in a bag. In fact, they have to produce, they have to produce a refuge next to a field of BT corn to in fact help the butterflies. So there are ways of dealing with that. And I have to admit that it's been a learning process and a learning process for some of the scientists that produced GMOs in the beginning. It was kind of a rocky, rocky start and but we're now understanding things a lot more. Thank you for your call for questions. I see we are at three o'clock. Well, thank you everybody for your patience and then thank you again to True North Steel for hosting me here. And thank you to my husband for allowing me to take over his office for an hour.