Whether genetically modified maize can cause environmental pollution or not

Introduction: at the end of 2001, the famous British magazine Nature published an article, the author claimed that they found that the DNA of genetically modified corn polluted the wild corn in remote areas of Mexico Recently, there has been a heated debate between the original author of the article and the scientists who questioned the research The controversial paper, written by Ignacio chappella and David Quist of the University of California, Berkeley, was published in nature on November 29, 2001 In the paper, the authors claim that they compared the wild corn samples collected from the Oaxaca mountains of Mexico with the genetically modified corn of Monsanto Company of the United States and the natural corn that is believed not to be polluted These wild corn growing sites are at least 100 kilometers away from industrial corn fields Chappella and Quist said they found that some samples of wild corn were contaminated with DNA fragments of genetically modified corn They speculated that the source of the pollution might come from food aid from the United States, and that the genetic pollution could destroy the precious biodiversity of Mexico's wild corn Since gene pollution is one of the core issues of the safety of genetically modified crops, this article has aroused great controversy since it was published Some people who are against genetically modified agriculture regard it as a new argument, but some scientists also question the reliability of the research, and think that the technology used to enlarge DNA samples in the experiment has problems, and the result is a kind of illusion The editor of the journal Nature said that the paper attracted some criticism after its publication, and the two authors put forward new research data for this purpose, but still could not settle the dispute The journal Nature acknowledged that the existing evidence "is not sufficient to show that the original paper is appropriate" In its 133 year history, the magazine rarely made such a statement In order to clarify the situation, the magazine decided to publish the new paper supported by the two authors and the other two articles questioning the research at the same time in the near future, so that the readers could judge by themselves The three articles had been published on the website of nature in advance.