Posted on 12/05/2018 7:57:18 AM PST by Red Badger
That first guy who saw that little, red, pea-sized fruit of a toxic nightshade and asked, “I wonder if that tastes good?”
I want to shake his hand.
I wonder if the same procedure could be used for those with muscular distrophy? Place the edited genes in a virus, inject it, let the virus do its thing, and spread the altered genes throughout the body.
That sounds oxymoronic.
That was MY first thought.
Talk about tough, less tasty meat.
“...the fruits and vegetables we eat today to what we ate a few hundred years ago. It was amazing. Many of them were mere shadows of what we now enjoy, some barely edible.”
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In the span of few years, the former sweet *mini-peppers* have grown from the size/shape of most hot varieties to actual small variants of the larger 5-lobed sweet peppers. The ones I bought a few days ago are only about 1/3 the size of normal full-sized sweet, colored peppers and are shaped like the large, traditional ones.
Same with Campari *cocktail* tomatoes. They used to be about 2x the size of a large cherry tomato. Some in my last box were actually closer in size to a small 4th-of-July tomato.
The difference between laboratory engineering and engineering via other methods is that in the lab, a degree of precision is possible that cannot be achieved by any other method.
I can literally change one single base pair of DNA and leave the entire rest of the genome untouched when using lab methods of genetic engineering. On the other hand, if I try to breed animals or plants for a trait, I may or may not get the trait... the trait could be linked to another trait that I do not want at all... there are unpredictable changes to the rest of the genome that can affect the organism's growth, appearance, health, flavor, etc.
The difference between older methods of genetic engineering and laboratory methods is analogous to the method of painting a wall in your house by throwing random cans of paint at it and hoping for the right color and complete coverage, vs. getting a can of paint of the desired color and applying to the wall exactly where you want it with brushes and rollers.
I think that’s why people are afraid of it. It gives geneticists the ability to create things that, possibly, could never naturally occur. This, at least theoretically, exposes us to the risk of creating something that wipes out all life.
And I could theoretically win the lotto if I ever bought a ticket.
The issue, as I see it, is more that people do not understand the biology of DNA.
Every time an organism reproduces, the process of reproduction introduces new mutations all over the genome. In humans, there are about 120 new mutations for every conception. A mutation can be lethal, in which case the organism fails to grow, usually early in development. (Not counting abortion, only ~15% of fertilized human ova develop into babies that survive to delivery.) Fluid, changing genomes are a characteristic of existence—so the fear that by selectively changing one base-pair or even an entire gene we will accidently do something dire that nature has not already done is not supported by the facts.
As for the risk that we would accidentally make a change that would wipe out all life—well, your chances of winning the lottery are pretty high in comparison. The task of creating something through genetic engineering that could wipe out all life is daunting, to say the least; it may even be impossible. And it would be a deliberate act, not accidental.
I actually have quite a bit of hands-on experience with genetic engineering. It’s common in the research world.
Wow, he’s even looking like a doublemuscled liberal. I didn’t know that liberal whiskered look was contagious.
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