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I’m hoping that there will be some developers out there that will be able to detect GMO in food. It may be difficult to detect when used in a process product but I hoping that it can be done for unprocessed foods like, corn, apples, papayas, zuccini and others that are coming like the potatoe. This would be a wonderful use of the SCIO as there is a huge movement to know about our food. It seems the Food Industry doesn’t want us to know what is in our food or where it comes from. Since here in the U.S. we haven’t been able to get these foods labeled, a way of detecting GMO would be a great.
Generally speaking, the net DNA difference between GMO and non-GMO is very small – changing a few genes out of 1000s.
Labs typically test for very specific gene alterations. Something that cannot be done with SCiO.
That said, SCiO may detect GMO if it alters certain attributes of the sample – for example, much more sugar, or a thicker peel, etc. – i.e. changes that are noticeable with NIR.Hello Hagai,
Can you tell us if SCiO plans on focusing Genetically Modified Organisms as it relates to our food? Or would that be something that we would have to do on our own?
Is there a website that catalogs what has been already scanned and added to a database? IE: different types of tomatoes? This would be really helpful in continuing to grow the sample base.
Thank you,
E
Hi Cuba,
We haven’t fully tested GMOs, and as Hagai mentioned – we don’t currently expect it to be possible to differentiate between GMO and non-GMO due to the lack of substantial differences between the samples on a molecular level.
We do plan to conduct more thorough testing on this issue in the future though, as many of our backers and supporters are as interested in GMO detection as you are.
Currently, there is no published list of application under development but we can share that SCiO consumer app, which will soon be released will include:
– A number of food nutrition analysis applets, for example analyzing the nutritional values of dairy products.
– Identification applets, such as the ability to identify and analyze pills.
– An application that allows you to work with the spectrometer by collecting material data and building analysis applets for your own materials.
After SCiO consumer app is released, new applications will be developed and released regularly. Some of the applications planned for development include an evaluation of produce, sugar and ethanol content in drinks. At the same time, we will continue to broaden our existing application databases, such as increasing the number of pills (which already stands at +/- 250 OTC pills). Additional applications are also under research, such as ones for breads and body fat percentage.
Ayelet,
The Consumer Physics Team
I am interested in this topic too. But it isn’t so much the fact that the DNA has changed that bothers me as much as the fact that these GMO foods are usually sprayed with large amounts of chemicals. So perhaps detecting artificial chemical levels in food would be a better way to utilize SCiO? Anyone working on this?
The fastest, cheapest and easiest way for GMO detection that I’ve found is these “QuickCombs” made by envirologix. There is an array of chemical detection points on the various “tines of the comb.
Possibly the place to start would be to analyze the different comb teeth from these type of a product and create a group of indicators (rather than straight DNA tests) such as proteins + carbs + x + y + z between the GMO versions and the non GMO versions.
There aren’t an infinite amount of GMO currently in production. Here’s the current “high- risk” list:
http://www.nongmoproject.org/gmo-facts/high-risk/
I’d love to find a way to participate in helping to formulate these models/methods. No need for a “right to know” labeling law if SCIO can help us know what we are being fed.
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