The research compared an original strain to a modified strain, to the modified strain with roundup. It is unsurprising that the modified strain, that is produc

The research compared an original strain to a modified strain, to the modified strain with roundup. It is unsurprising that the modified strain, that is producing an extra protein in high amounts will be under a heavier metabolic load than the same strain that is not producing that extra protein. It seems the metabolic load showed up in a few particular places that haven't obviously been investigated before, and now we can more carefully probe those differences now that the team did a thorough screen to find them. However, what the research did not do is compare the metabolic load in the modified strain to anything else. They did not compare it to an average corn strain, an 'heirloom' corn strain, a corn that is under cold/heat/viral or any other kind of environmental stress or bounty. Nor did they compare the corn metabolite levels to other foods. I suspect the difference in metabolic load between a strain +/- a particular resistance protein is likely less than the difference in metabolic load between various corn strains, much less the difference between fertilized/shaded/cold-conditioned corn, much less the original grass strain from which human-edible corn came from, much less from another food crop. The difference appears in the ratio of particular metabolites in the corn. And at the end of the day the difference in amounts of small molecules upon adding this metabolic stress is likely completely overwhelmed by the literal amount of material (ex. if you don't want that much of the metabolite, use 0.01% less corn. And if the corn is processed at all, this kind of difference becomes moot very quickly.) The result is not surprising and is framed in a particularly click/news-bait worthy way. The nice part of the research is that it did a lot of hard work to find the variables that now can be looked for in those above cross-wise comparisons without having to do the major hard work of screening an entire transcriptome for each comparison. But it does not in any way provide evidence for any danger to human health at all. Some math: The modified strain's largest difference in metabolites was a 28x increase in cadaverine (btw, it's pretty entertaining how many nitrogen-containing compounds have fantastic names because of their odor). According to [1] the difference in the amount of cadaverine between dried and canned corn is 5.5x (with the low cadaverine in dried corn mentioned as nutritionally deficient). And the total amount of cadavarine in fresh corn is ~ 10mg/100g which is ~ 0.01% by mass. Most of the other large changes in metabolites were changes of less than an order of magnitude. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814611014129 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814611...