What GMOs are and what are Transgenics? Are they same?

Answer is No.

We can say: All Transgenics are GMOs but all GMOs are not Transgenics”.

From time to time all these terminologies played a notorious role in hardship of understanding the meaning of it. Thus it led us to fear of using it or to taste it along with many questions like whether is it safe or not, whether there is any adverse effect on environment etc. But trust me, it’s not that hard to understand. You must know that whatever you are taking as a food on daily basis 90% are GMOs. Let’s get to the point.

Suppose, you have bought a couple of Kgs of Tomato from the market. Now after 3-4 day you saw that your tomatoes start shrinking, it has got rotting softness and running towards spoilage. Strange! You brought it to consume it for a week and it took a very little time to spoil. Why did that happen?

Actually, the firmness and shelf life of the tomato fruit is determined by the cell wall protein and like other fruits on ripening it starts to soften which may lead to further fungal infection as penetration was never such easy. Thus shelf life is hampered in the case of that tomatoes. Now, you must know that the cell wall protein was softened due to an enzyme, named Polygalacturonase secreted inside the fruit as a natural behaviour. You might be thinking that, what if that enzyme secretion never happened or even if happened with a slow rate. Yes, that’s the point where comes genetic modification.

How?

The enzyme Polygalaturonase secretion was triggered by a gene identified in Tomato plant when it was onset of ripening. Now, if we perform a modification to the genetic constitution of the tomato so that the expression of the genetic material could be turn on or off, in this case it would be off, the game takes a U-turn. The expression of the PG-gene that triggers the secretion of Polygalacturonase enzyme would be closed or make it slow. Thus the shelf life of the tomato could be increased and you might have you tomato throughout the week instead of 3-4 days.

The thinking was applied practically later by a Californian Company named Calgene from where first genetically modified tomato Flavr-Savr were developed with the use of APH(3’)II, i.e. aminoglycoside 3’-phosphotransferase. The U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) on 19^th May, 1994 concluded the use of APH(3’)II to be safe.

That is Genetic modification and the produced called Genetically Modified Organism or in brief GMOs. You might find a lot of GMOs in the market whose natural behaviour were either supressed or have been aggravated. Genetic constitution of many improved varieties of several crops are being modified through artificial laboratory techniques.

Read More: Should we support GMOs?

What’s transgenic then?

Transgenics are also GMOs as their genetic constitutions are modified. But the genetic modifications are distant, huge and not normal. In this case we can take an imaginary example. Suppose you have a farm and you are growing Tomato there. One night you saw some fireflies that emits light in dark. You thought what if my tomato plants could possess the same feature. Then, you identified the genome causing light emition in firefly and transplanted it to the genetic constitution, of tomato the other feature of tomato intact. From then your tomato lightens up in dark.

Actually this hypothesis is not fully imaginary and were applied in real. But crop was Nicotiana tabacum or in common word we say it tobacco plant. In eighties, the experiment was carried out and was successful as a public demonstration was given. The main biotechnological tool used in this case was the Agrobacterium mediated gene transfer. Agrobacterium is a natural occuring bacteria that helps in gene transfer though biotechnological way.

That means a huge alteration and distant gene transplantation in genetic material causes the formation of new genetic material and the produce called transgenics.  

I hope you can digest it now.