I don't understand why that is a reasonable concern but I'm not an expert so would like to learn if there is a reason.
My logic is that Monsanto got the gene that gives the wheat its resistance to RoundUp (aka glyphosate) from Agrobacterium (see 1) which is perfectly capable of horizontal gene transfer into plants itself, without Monsanto helping (see 2). Also, there are plenty of weed species that are already glyphosate resistant (see 3). I suspect that a greater problem is that widespread and frequent use of glyphosate will increase the prevalence of resistance in weeds.
Your understanding is close, they sourced bacteria from puddles that had glyphosate resistant bacteria, then they modify agrobacterium that are specific to whatever crop they are trying to modify. Every cell in a plant has to be able to fend off disease because there is no central immune system. So agrobacterium inject their DNA into plant DNA so the cells think they are not a threat. So, if you have an altered agrobacterium, then those altered genes are passed on as well. BUT, to grow a whole new plant, you have to cut the infected cells out, grow a callus, then grow an actual plant from the callus before it can even produce seeds. Very few plants can grow from clones like that in the wild AND you need to have enough cells that have the same modification for any significant chance of growing a modified plant. So the odds of a single aphid injecting agrobacterium in a cell, then that cell somehow falling off, growing in a medium that can support callus development, then also somehow developing roots in an auxin rich environment, all before the seasons kill it off so it can spread seeds are very slim indeed.
Being that all of the techniques used in the industry are based off of nature anyways, if it is plausible for GMOs to do it, then normal plants have been doing it before GMOs even existed.
Good riddance. They'll have to come up with yet another pesticide. The whole way we're doing agriculture has little regard for ecology and endemic species. Palm tree crops are replacing jungle, GE crops already replaced what used to be bison prairies. The bison are an almost extinct species.
Also the EU will stop buying wheat that is known to have been GE contaminated.
This is between mitochondrial genomes, not plant genomes. Unless the roundup genes are part of the mitochondrial, not the nuclear, genome, this doesn’t apply.
Surely this is why we should have caution, because if it escapes it's very hard to control. This wheat was never commercially sold, what if the reason for that was that it was a danger to human health. Do you just want it popping up anyway?
Well that's not the reason, the reason is they are testing it out and seeing if it expresses the desired traits. They do extensive testing and sequencing in a lab before it even enters an open field.
I'm pro GMO, the science is very sound and uses techniques directly from nature to modify plants, so it's not like we are making something that can't shouldn't exist. But I've always said, its our addiction to the pesticides and soil neglect that is far more harmful than any of these approved GMOs are going to pose.
How can you be so sure that new GE food is perfectly fine? Our digestive system is incredibly complex and we may not be able to know the specific interactions that is going on inside our bodies.
Yeah its also incredibly adaptive. You hardly know any specific interaction with anything you come into contact with on a daily basis, doesn't mean you hide in a bubble your whole life. The body deals with things as they come at it, thank evolution or we would have been extinct long ago. Every time our species moved to a new region we were introduced to completely new foods. GMOs are tiny variants of what we are already used to. I'm sure we'll do fine.
I'm curious to know though. What specific complexity are you worried about disrupting.
So what I gather from the article is that the wheat was engineered by Monsanto to resist Roundup, a Monsanto product. Get rid of Monsanto and the whole drama is unnecessary.
The only drama is coming from the GE illiterate anti-GMO crowd. They are just as bad as the Anti-Vax crowd if you ask me. They don't understand the science, it's been perfectly safe for decades, the GE toolkit is literally taken from nature because it does it all the time, and millions of dollars are spent every year to increase the effectiveness and accuracy of the modifications.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer
https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/58/1/1/515544