There were two related stories that popped up in my twitter feed today about GMO potatoes; the stories intrigued me primarily because they once again call into question what it means to be a genetically modified organism (GMO).
The first story I saw was about using (now-outdated) technology to delete a gene in potato that, when deleted, increases cold-storage longevity and reduces production of the toxin acrylamide when fried.
The second was the publication of a surprising result that sweet potatoes are naturally GMOs - sometime in early stages of cultivation, sweet potatoes were infected with a bacterium that inserted its DNA into the genome of the sweet potato. It appears that this event was then actually selected for during later cultivation in early human history. This means that sweet potatoes are an unregulated GMO.
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