How One GMO bacteria Nearly Took Down the Planet

In the early 1990s, a European genetic engineering company was preparing to field test its genetically modified version of Klebsiella planticola, which it had tested in the lab and presumed to be safe. But if it weren't for the work of a team of independent scientists led by Dr. Elaine Ingham, that company could have literally killed every terrestrial plant on the planet.

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But when Dr. Ingham and her team tested the impact that the sludge would have on the ecological balance and the agricultural soil when they applied it as fertilizer, they found that wheat grown in the sludge died after about week. And as Dr. Ingham pointed out in a presentation in 1998, by modifying the Klebsiella planticola, they fundamentally changed what it does in the soil:

The parent bacterium makes a slime layer that helps it stick to the plant's roots. The engineered bacterium makes about 17 parts per million alcohol. What is the level of alcohol that is toxic to roots? About one part per million. The engineered bacterium makes the plants drunk, and kills them.

Klebsiella planticola is found in the root systems of every terrestrial plant on Earth, so if the modified bacterium were released into the wild, it would threaten every single terrestrial plant on the planet.

[link to www.truth-out.org]

Here's a "rebuttal" which doesn't seem to provide any facts to refute the claim that the genetically modified root bacteria would kill any plant they come in contact with.

[link to www.scoop.co.nz]

Last Edited by Gimme Some Truth on 08/08/2016 11:30 PM