Not with weed killer - they didn’t combine plants with weed killer.
“Not with weed killer - they didn’t combine plants with weed killer.”
They engineered the plants to be RESISTANT to weed killer, not to produce it. They replaced the gene for an enzyme inactivated by the herbicide with a resistant one. It doesnt modify the herbicide or break it down, so any residue or metabolites present would be there without the modification.
The nice thing about genetically engineered modifications is that you know EXACTLY what changes are made to the organism, right down to the gene sequence, expression levels, as well as the impact on upstream and downstream genes. With natural selection methods you know NOTHING about the changes made.
Corn has been resistant to weed killers for, well, nearly forever. 2-4-D is an example of that.
What the scientists did was add one more weed killer to that long line of weed killers that corn is resistant to.