Scientist underscores usefulness of genome editing technology to Africa
By Sylvester Thompson
Prof. Olalekan Akinbo, Scientist and Supervisor at Centre of Excellence in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI), African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), says Genome Editing (GEd) technology is useful to Africa.
Akinbo spoke in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday.
He clarified that Genome Editing (GEd) and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) were not the same in principle.
Making this distinction, he said GMO could apply Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) information from another plant or animal to form a crop, while GEd had nothing to do with external applications.
Akinbo explained that in GEd, all what was needed was already inside the plant’s DNA, hence the idea was to use the inherent information to assist t...