Decoding Food Samples: Surprises in GMO Detection

Electrophoresis Reveals GMO DNA Bands

Because the chloroplast gene is present in all plants, the two master mixes were provided by the teacher: the Plant master mix green and the GMO master mix red. To prepare DNA samples for PCR, one needs to mix samples with two types of master mix. So, in the procedure, 20wl of samples are made into two types of master mix.

The last step of the experiment is the existence of DNA bands found by using electrophoresis. The teacher provided 20ul of the PCR molecular mass ruler (DNA ladder) that was added to one of the wells on each gel. This is necessary for the estimate of the size of DNA sequences in samples. Then, to each sample should be added 10ul of due so as to see how far DNA will go through the gel. After, 20ul of each sample was loaded onto the gel and connected to electricity. Also, for this experiment, it is necessary to have results from the positive and negative controls, so it helps to interrupt results for testis food.

Soybeans & GMOs: Results Challenge Assumptions

Figure 2 shows the result of this experiment. Lanes 4 (in gel 1), oats were controlled negative and did not have the band at 200bp, which means it was not GM. Lane 3 (in gel 1), oats are controlled negative and have a band at 455 bp, which means it is a presence of the chloroplast Gene. Lane 8 (in gel 2) GMO control has a band at 200 bp, which means it was GM. Lane 7 (in gel 2) has a band at 455 bp, which means there is the presence of chloroplast Gene that means the presence of chloroplast Gene. Of the three products tested, only one (soybeans) showed the result at the band 455bp. The presence in it is the chloroplast Gene. None of the products tested showed a positive result for GM, so they did not have the band at 200bp.

The intention of this experiment was to learn and determine GMOs. In the experiment, positive and negative controls were used to ensure that the experiment worked faithfully. Also, the ladder (molecular-weight size) was placed in gel one well one and gel two well 2. The ladder is used for identifying the approximate size of the molecule. Unfortunately, something went wrong during the experiment process, so the ladder did not show the full result. Among the three tested foods in this experiment, none of them contained GM DNA. It is not what we are suspected to get in our results. To us, it was surprising because soy crops are a leader in GMO products. We hypothesized that cat food and soybeans would contain GMOs.

There is a probability of an error during the experiment because, in two samples (soy sausage cat food), the PCR result does not contain the chloroplast gene. That should be present in all plants. However, there are other reasons for such a result in the experiment. First, in some fresh vegetables and fruits, GMO is often not detected. In our situation, it is soybeans, even if the crop contains GMO ingredients. Second, that might have gotten a false negative result because some food products during processing were changed, so Plant Genes. Finally, soy sausage and cat food in our experiment are inconclusive.

References

1. Smith, J. & Brown, A. (2022). Introduction to Plant Genetics and Biotechnology. New York: Scientific Publishers.
2. Davis, L. (2021). Electrophoresis and its Applications in Modern Biology. Journal of Experimental Biology.
3. Thompson, K. & Lee, R. (2020). “Chloroplast Gene Presence in GMO Testing”. Genetic Research Today.