Hello

Living modified organisms : Its a product of scientific advances which mean the possible to manipulate genetic material directly, rather than relying on natural reproduction and choice of the best offspring. here you can insert genes into their genetic code and often will have the ability to pass on this manipulated genetic code to their offspring .

Good Luck

https://global.britannica.com/science/genetically-modified-organism

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/genetically-modified-organisms-gmos-transgenic-crops-and-732

http://biodiversitya-z.org/content/living-modified-organism-lmo

Hi, the term genetically modified always implies that genetic material (so, in case of all living organisms and DNA viruses: DNA, in the case of RNA viruses: RNA) is inserted into the genetic code and passed on to the next generation by replication.

If the genetic material is only introduced and transiently expressed, you have induced that particular cell to express a gene that is not part of its genetic material. The protein produced will exert its function as enzyme or structural protein and then be degraded with no trace in following generations of cells.

Living modified organism is not a good term, I believe, becausing "living" would strictly speaking indicate that it must having living cells. This definition should therefore exclude viruses and bacteriophages.

The technique you mentioned above is known as CRISPR/cas9 and it is naturally bacterial immune system in order to protect themselves from the infection by viruses or foreign genome from others by degrading the foreign genome and nowadays it is used as technique for genome editing where you can knock out/in the target sequence from/into chromosome using CRISPR/cas9 

Hi Najib, just to play the devils advocate:

Eukaryotic genomes (human, animal, plant) are infested with retroviral sequences that are copied from one generation to the next. Does this mean that all these eukaryotes are GMOs?

No. These mutations were acquired through evolution and not man-made tinkering with the genetics of individual species.

But what about selective breeding?  Man has produced countless species of plants and animals through selective breeding, way before recombinant technology was available. Selective breeding has screwed up genomes so bad that many species cannot reproduce without man's help. 

So where do you draw the line? When can you say: "No we object to this man made variant"?   

Dear

The term living modified organism (LMO) is considered to be functionally the same as genetically modified organism (GMO).

Please for more informations check the  following lpublication: Ma, J., et al. The production of recombinant pharmaceutical proteins in plants. Nature Reviews Genetics 4, 794–805 (2003) doi:10.1038/nrg1177

Hoping to be helpful

Marius

@ Marius. You are not being helpful.

Please stop littering RG treads with useless and irrelevant information.

"The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity is an international treaty governing the movements of living modified organisms (LMOs) resulting from modern biotechnology from one country to another."

http://bch.cbd.int/protocol/background

Here is the definition of LMO according to the Cartagena Protocol:

“Living modified organism” means any living organism that possesses a novel combination of genetic material obtained through the use of modern biotechnology;

“Modern biotechnology” means the application of:in vitro nucleic acid techniques, including recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and direct injection of nucleic acid into cells or organelles; or fusion of cells beyond the taxonomic family; that overcome natural physiological reproductive or recombination barriers and that are not techniques used in traditional breeding and selection.

An LMO is therefore an organism that contains a novel combination of genetic material and results from (i) in vitro modification of nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) molecules; or (ii) cell fusion between organisms of different taxonomic families. In either case, for an organism to be considered an LMO, the techniques used in its development should be ones “that overcome natural physiological reproductive or recombination barriers and that are not techniques used in traditional breeding and selection”. 

Modern biotechnology techniques include, but are not limited to, in vitro DNA and RNA techniques for the modification of genetic material (e.g. by insertion, modification or deletion of genes or other nucleic acid sequences) in all types of organisms, such as plants, animals, microbes and viruses."

http://bch.cbd.int/cpb_art15/training/module1.shtml

Based on this definition in an international treaty, the use of CRISPR/Cas9 would, in my opinion, be an example of a modern biotechnology technique. Therefore, organisms modified genetically by this technique, regardless of whether a plasmid was involved, would be examples of LMOs.

Thanks Adam for bringing forward an international treaty that tries to define genetically modified organisms. But. Too little, too late

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity is an international treaty governing the movements of living modified organisms (LMOs) resulting from modern biotechnology from one country to another. It was adopted on 29 January 2000 as a supplementary agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity and entered into force on 11 September 2003.

However, recombinant technology is moving along faster than any elected legislative bodies can keep up with.

The genie is out of the bottle and there is no way to put him back.

Plus, the CRISPR/Cas system was discovered in bacteria in the 1980's and applied to eukaryotic cells ~20 years later.

How can a line be drawn saying: "we accept DNA modifications of livestocks and plants from 2000 BC to 2000 AD. Any modified livestocks and plants that were introduced after 2000 AD are unacceptable"

That's exactly what George W. Bush did with embryonic stem cell lines!

@Adam. Huh?

What does that have to do with this tread?

Nothing, really. I was just responding to your remark about using an arbitrary cutoff time to regulate research with an example of it actually happening.

Non sequitur. Got it.