Let�s start with definitions:  what is a genetically modified organism�  or GMO? GM means �genetically modified,� and  O means �organism�, which is a living creature.  GMO is most commonly applied to crop plants, which are plants people grow for food, and it means a crop plant whose genes have been modified.  Genes are the stuff of heredity, of inhereitance.  They�re what provide the information that for a couple to have a baby (not a chick or a kitten) and for corn kernels grow into corn plants, not rice or wheat plants.  Is genetic modification of crop plants new?  The answer is a NO!  People have been genetically modifying plants to make them into food plants for thousands and thousands -- and thousands of years.  The best guess is that people have been at it for somewhere between 10,000 and perhaps 50,000 years.  And if you just give a moment�s thought to the difference between a dandelion and a corn plant, you�ll say, �of course!�  Wild plants use all kinds of tricks to spread their seeds far and wide.  Dandelions launch their seeds on little parachutes that float in the wind.  Other kinds of plants produce seeds surrounded by tenacious hooks -- we call them �burrs� -- that get caught in an animal�s fur as it races by, taking the seed far away.  All wild plants have some way to scatter their seeds far from the mother plant and to survive intact, should some bird or animal eat the seed.  So the seeds are generally pretty tough, some even as hard as rock.  But for people to collect plant seeds (we call them grain), the seeds have to stick to the plant until we come along to harvest the seeds.  So among the first traits that people modified was the tendency of seeds to scatter.  But did people really do the modifying way back then? Plant genes and genomes -- that�s the set of all the plant�s genes -- are constantly changing or mutating (the technical term for a genetic change is a �mutation�). Mutations happen because of the very chemical nature of the genetic material, called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), and the complex protein machinery that maintains it in chromosomes and copies it when cells divide. So genetic modification (GM) is hardly new -- it�s happening all the time. Most mutations are not good for organisms, but some mutations are.  A mutation, for example, that keeps seeds stuck to a plant are hardly good for spreading that plant�s seeds far and wide -- but it�s just the thing that makes a plant begin to be useful as a food plant for people.