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by picture
1486 days ago
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As a complete outsider, I've got a question for you. How hard is it to do this GMO thing? Why does it have to be limited to only a few big corporations? Why have we yet to see a diverse industry of startups and small companies competing to make the best strains at the lowest prices with the most features, like we saw with the electronics industry? |
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Creating a stably transformed plant is very difficult. A plant is made of b(tr?)illions of cells, and if you insert a "gene of interest" into one of them, it will exist transiently as each cell in the plant has its own cell line. So the standard way is to insert your gene into a cell and then induce/reprogramme it to go through the process of embryogenesis. This is critical because that single cell is the "parent" of every single other cell that will eventually compose the adult plant. Therefore, we can ensure the entire plant is stably transformed. Anything else is essentially chimeric.
The reason it is limited to big corporations is because of: market strategy, regulations, and IP. When the technology reached the point of commercialization, the early adopters decided on producer-centric traits because of: market value, ease of implementation, and ability to upsell.
When you are trying to sell a farmer something, you have to solve one of their problems. What does a farmer hate most? Weeds and other pests. So it's no surprise that the companies selling GM seeds are the same companies selling pesticides. In order to use their seed's technology, you also have to buy their pesticides. Now you've changed your whole farm operation to suit their technology and there's no going back. Gotcha!
It also turns out that getting these cultivars into the market is a big pain in the ass. The regulatory process to get a GM crop into the field and then onto the shelves is time-consuming and expensive... so again the big companies with money can make the investment. Finally, there is a lot of IP protection for these companies; from the seeds, to the chemicals, to the process of plant transformation.
Remember the part about plant transformation and embryogenesis? Very few species can undergo the process reliably - at least we only have methods for a handful. And within each species, there are only a few genotypes that work. Currently, the only GM crops are corn, soybean, cotton, potato, papaya, squash, canola, alfalfa, and sugar beet. Companies can own a patent on certain cultivars of these crops. They also probably own the patent for whatever herbicide the plant is resistant to.
You might ask yourself: Why don't they find out what's different about the genotypes that work and the ones that don't? Well, we did! It turns out there are a few native genes called "developmental regulators" which we can overexpress to force a plant into embryogenesis. That technology is also patented.
However, there are novel methods coming out, and there are startups and small companies doing this: check out Calyxt and Inari.
More will come in the future, but it's an expensive endeavor with a huge upfront cost, overhead, many highly educated employees, and a long time to market. Ag and Food tech VC funding has grown from ~5B (2015) to ~55B (2021) so it's coming.
It will be interesting to see what value-added traits come out next.