It was in 1973 when Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen made a revolutionary breakthrough in the GMO technology field by being the first to successfully genetically engineered an organism by targeting a specific gene of one organism, cutting out the gene, and including it into another organism’s genetic pool. From that groundbreaking innovation that mankind has seen that day, the unimaginable potential that “genetically modified organisms” can have. Some of the capacities of GMO’s already include, the anticoagulant antithrombin “ATryn” being genetically added to a goat’s gene so that its milk produces human antithrombin. Then there’s the newly develop “golden rice” that has been modified to contain a higher amount of vitamin A in order to reduce the estimated yearly 500,000 children who will go blind from vitamin A deficiency. To even the most known GMO’s and how crops have been modified to have combat insects and pests, as well as some having resistance to herbicides.

            But like how those organisms have been modified we can take it a step further and make GMO’s that can actively help the environment and humanity. Some possibilities of this can range anywhere from modifying plastic eating organisms that currently takes a substantial amount of time to digest plastic and therefore helping clean the environment from landfills of plastic. Modifying plants to draw nitrogen from the hair is one that is currently being worked on right now and would help solve two problems, removing nitrogen from underwater which speeds up climate change, and the nitrogen attracted would also work as a fertilizer. Lastly but not the last possibility of GMO’s that show how much potential the GMO’s can have is simple, but we could add genes from hardwood trees that allow massive amounts of carbon to be absorbed from the environment into common trees.

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