Can GM Plants Combat Climate Change?

news.discovery.com
By Jessica Marshall
Wed Dec 29, 2010 01:25 PM ET

Genetically modified plants could sequester more carbon and make better biofuels. So what's standing in their way?

Plants pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and biofuel crops could reduce our demand for fossil fuels. But how much more could these plants do to combat climate change, especially if we used the tools of genetic engineering to tackle the problem?

That's the question posed by Christer Jansson of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and colleagues, who consider all the possible ways that land plants counteract climate change and where genetic modification could play a role in enhancing these processes. They published their work in BioScience.

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