Scientists from the United States said on the 2nd that they have confirmed through a six-week field trial that the three transgenic Indian mustards have strong ability to absorb soil selenium. They believe that the removal of soil contamination by genetically modified plants may be an efficient and inexpensive method. Selenium is an essential trace element for humans and animals, but excess selenium can cause poisoning. Scientists in the United States discovered in the 1980s that selenium contamination in water could lead to abnormalities in birds. Soil selenium contamination occurs in many parts of the world. A team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the US Department of Agriculture’s Center for Agricultural Research published a paper in the new issue of Environmental Science and Technology, saying that genetically modified Indian mustard grown in field trials has a better effect than removing selenium from soil. Even better in the greenhouse experiment, this shows that the transgenic Indian mustard has a strong adaptability. Native Indian mustard has a strong ability to absorb selenium in the soil because selenium, the main form of selenium, is chemically similar to sulphate, whereas Indian mustard prefers sulphate. American scientists have developed three types of transgenic Indian mustard, one that enhances the production of adenosine triphosphatase and helps break down selenate into harmless organisms. The other two enhance the production of glutathione synthetase and glutathione synthetase, respectively, which protect plants from excessive selenate damage. Through field comparison experiments, the researchers found that transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana, which enhances ATPase, absorbs selenium more than 4.3 times as much as wild type, and the other two transgenic varieties are 2.3- to 2.8-fold higher than wild-type varieties. Norman Terry, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study, said that they used the method of changing the chloroplast DNA of plants to grow genetically modified mustard, instead of routinely changing the nuclear DNA method, so as to avoid pollen contamination of natural plants in transgenic plants. Plants enhance the safety of transgenic plants. It is also useful to absorb selenium-contaminated mustard. Researchers say that these mustards can be dried, milled, and used as feed additives for animal husbandry and aquaculture in selenium-poor areas.
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