We are providing you with some sample articles below for your enjoyment. If you would like to receive this bulletin on a regular basis please see our membership page. In the ever-increasing development of biotechnology to enhance food production, the terminator gene confronts not only those who raise produce organically, but also the conventional farmer, and the consumer who seeks quality food, and may unknowingly partake of food, which has been changed, with the introduction of bioengineered methods. A given type of potato reflects the values that man has bred into it. Distant species in nature cannot be crossed.
Nature has a kind of veto on what culture can do to a potato.
But now, during years of genetic engineering of introducing specific qualities to a plant, the terminator shows itself. Now breeders can bring qualities from anywhere in nature into the genome of a plant. An example of this would be flounders for their frost tolerance and from viruses for disease resistance. In the newly developed 'New Leaf Superior' potato, Bacillus thuringiensis , a soil bacterium that produces the organic insecticide known as Bt has been introduced into the plant and it will now carry its own insecticide. It overrides the species barrier, allowing combinations of genetic traits that are unlikely to exist in nature to be combined in a particular plant, animal or microorganism.