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In reply to the discussion: Insect Experts issue "Urgent" Warning on using GM seeds [View all]mike_c
(37,045 posts)30. the cry endotoxins are identical...
...and there is ZERO evidence of vertebrate toxicity. ZERO.
As for your second assertion, every gene is subject to random mutations, but they are infrequent, and putting CRY genes into plants does not increase their mutation rate at all. That leaves selection as the most likely reason that plants might not continue "producing proper BT toxin and nothing else into the indefinite future." What on Earth do you see as possible elements of the selective environment that might cause that? The only selection plants expressing Bt are under with regard to CRY loci is insect herbivory, so any selection would likely drive reciprocal defenses against resistance, and there is likewise no current evidence that's happening.
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I guess God must have created some Bt resistant rootworms just to teach us a lesson. nt
bemildred
Mar 2012
#1
I had read somewhere (but can't find the link now) that about 95% of commercially grown
AllyCat
Mar 2012
#6
You think that's bad, my family carries what we rerer to as the "Samuel Jackson gene"
hedgehog
Mar 2012
#22
That's because it's applied externally and rots, it's not the innards of the plant producing it.
saras
Mar 2012
#28
there are actual differences between the specificity/mode of action/biodegradebaly of the B.t. toxin
Tumbulu
Mar 2012
#72
Pre-Civil War subsistence agriculture was the rule for poor whites and free blacks.
HubertHeaver
Mar 2012
#61
Can't sell a solution if there are no problems. The Spanish did their best to outlaw the natives in
harun
Mar 2012
#63
There is always that one greedy F'er down the road that will go fencerow to fencerow with corn while
HubertHeaver
Mar 2012
#19
Insects hate it too. Anything dangerous to one form of life is likely to be dangerous to another.
harun
Mar 2012
#33