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That is true but Genetic Engineering has largely been limited to cross-breeding plants. You truly lack imagination if think that roundup resistant crops repres

• deleted 12y ago
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• a_bonobo 12y ago
  One of my favorite current genetic engineering programs is to turn rice from a C_3 plant into a C_4 plant. C_4 plants have a more complicated photosynthesis system allowing them to fix CO_2 more efficiently, and since C_4 seems to have evolved relatively recent they are still rare. Only about 5% of all plants are C_4, but they fixate 30% of carbon fixated by plants! If we could engineer rice into a C_4 plant, we'd a) get faster growing rice with more yield and b) since rice is grown all over the world, we'd with one stroke get rid of a massive amount of carbon from the atmosphere. No-one has tried to do this before (it's a bit like ripping out a car's engine you know very little about and replacing it by a more sophisticated engine you know very little about), but they're hopeful to have 'prototype' C_4 rice plants by 2016. Edit: It's being funded by the Gates foundation and several governments so it's not a pipe dream. It's one of the most exciting and 'grand' projects in plant biotech at the moment!