Cotton plants native to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula may all look the same — unkempt and untamed bushes with flowers that shift from pale yellow to violet as pollinators visit them. But genes that have escaped from genetically modified cotton crops have made some of these native plants fundamentally different, changing their biology and the way they interact with insects.
“These are profoundly interesting effects,” says Norman Ellstrand, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Riverside. “It’s the first case that really suggests that a whole ecosystem can be disrupted” after transgenes enter a wild population.
The results challenge one long-held view that when genes from genetically modified crops escape into the wild, they have only a neutral effect on wild plants or pass on their benefits to weeds, says Alicia Mastretta Yanes, a plant molecular ecologist at the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity in Mexico City. The findings confirm that unexpected outcomes of this genetic transfer, some of which “were never imagined, or at least were not assumed as possible,” do happen sometimes, she says.
“These are profoundly interesting effects,” says Norman Ellstrand, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Riverside. “It’s the first case that really suggests that a whole ecosystem can be disrupted” after transgenes enter a wild population.
The results challenge one long-held view that when genes from genetically modified crops escape into the wild, they have only a neutral effect on wild plants or pass on their benefits to weeds, says Alicia Mastretta Yanes, a plant molecular ecologist at the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity in Mexico City. The findings confirm that unexpected outcomes of this genetic transfer, some of which “were never imagined, or at least were not assumed as possible,” do happen sometimes, she says.
