Dave Mayonado

Dave Mayonado works for a company that has come under quite a bit of heat lately through the use og genectic modified organism. Monsanto uses GMO’S to improve field yields by either being able to add or shut off genes in a crop. After a scientific study of GMO’s by scientist, GMO’s were deemed to be just as safe as conventional breeding techniques. Some top products of biotechnology are Roundup Ready, YieldGard, DroughtGard, and Vistive Gold/Plenish. A very interesting topic that Dave covered was gene silencing to control corn root worm. The corn is genetically modified containing a certain type of double stranded RNA in it. Once the root worm ingests the corn the double stranded RNA enters the cells. The cells then defend itself by targeting the gene SNF7, causing the worm to die. Dave mentioned s a take home message that you can never be to educated on your job, staying on top of everything.

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