#rna_tueurs

  • #Monsanto’s coming up with an alternative to GMOs | Grist
    http://grist.org/news/monsantos-coming-up-with-an-alternative-to-gmos

    Here’s how it works: All living things contain DNA, and that DNA carries the genetic information that cells need to make proteins. But it’s actually RNA, DNA’s less famous workhorse of a partner, that takes that genetic information out into the cell to get shit done. Viruses also use RNA, however, so cells have a kind of defense mechanism to detect viral RNA, memorize its contents, destroy it, and then hunts down its progeny to destroy them too.

    Told you it was kind of badass.

    With a little tweak, however, this defense mechanism can be turned against itself, so that a cell starts attacking its own genetic code. That’s where BioDirect comes in. Using spray-on RNA that looks like viral RNA but is actually genetic information from weeds or pests or whatever it is Monsanto wants to target, the company can effectively turn the enemy against itself. It could even use BioDirect to target certain genes in crops themselves in order to make those crops, for example, drought resistant.

    So if an orange grove in Florida is suddenly overrun with the insect that transmits greening disease (look it up — it’s destroying the orange industry), farmers could, in theory, just spray on some insect RNA BioDirect until the situation is under control and then go about their business — no pesticides or genetically engineered trees required.

    #it_has_begun #agriculture #pesticide #RNA_tueurs