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blowfish posted:Given accurate enough selection through lots of effort and time investment (say, you sequence the genomes of every generation of crop you produce and make sure to only propagate those with the exact mutations you want) you could evolve arbitrary sequences into an organism. GMOs are a shortcut because waiting for all the right mutations to line up and sequencing every loving plant in each generation is tedious and expensive, but it's a difference of degree and not kind.
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Aug 28, 2015 14:08
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uS BIOLOGISTS, we can't figure out how this gentelical mocidifation works and constantly insert genes producing toxins into wheat that cause cancers in statistically insignificant amounts to undermine our work because we hate ourselves
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Aug 28, 2015 15:06
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Fly posted:I think the degree is so large as to destroy the argument of equivalence. I think the argument could help to debunk anti-GMO complaints if someone were able to produce the equivalent of some strain of Bt-maize (that is expressing some B. thuringiensis genes) using artificially selective breeding. My own prediction is that such a day will never come, which makes apparent why GMO technology is a powerful tool. How about nature producing roundup ready weeds a dozen times over all by itself?
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Aug 28, 2015 16:54
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Friendly Tumour posted:genital mocidifation works I endorse this product and/or service.
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Aug 28, 2015 17:34
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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By the way, since nobody here has posted it yet: The Germanoid nation of self-declared conservation world champions and wishful sustainability thinking is considering an opt out of EU decisions on GMOs to just institute a blanket ban instead like Scotland. gently caress my country. quote:
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Aug 28, 2015 20:30
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blowfish posted:By the way, since nobody here has posted it yet: I'm little surprised this doesn't violate EU law.
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Aug 28, 2015 22:09
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Solkanar512 posted:I'm little surprised this doesn't violate EU law. EU science advisor Anne Glover specifically got sacked for being overly pro-GMO (to the loud cheers of most environmentalist groups, who normally demand science based policy  ), and Juncker made a point out of letting every country choose its GMO rules for itself. Politically, it's a choice between infuriating corporate interests or making a large proportion of the population hate your guts, so it's unsurprising that he did his best to make a non-decision.e: at this point it's helpful to remind yourself that around 40% of the EU budget is "Natural Resources and Sustainable Growth", i.e. mostly farming subsidies. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Aug 28, 2015 |
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Aug 28, 2015 22:13
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Fly posted:I think the degree is so large as to destroy the argument of equivalence. I think the argument could help to debunk anti-GMO complaints if someone were able to produce the equivalent of some strain of Bt-maize (that is expressing some B. thuringiensis genes) using artificially selective breeding. My own prediction is that such a day will never come, which makes apparent why GMO technology is a powerful tool. If you evolve it one base at a time, it takes essentially as many generations as the gene is long, multiplied by however many inbetween generations are needed to produce each successive point mutation. Somewhat shorter if you do not need your gene in a particular area of the genome or to have the mutations appear in a particular order. For annual crops that's still at least centuries, but I'd expect we could do it in Drosophila in a few decades.
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Aug 28, 2015 22:40
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Caconym posted:How about nature producing roundup ready weeds a dozen times over all by itself?
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Aug 29, 2015 02:49
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Fly posted:Direct and severe selection pressure are also powerful, but that's life finding a way rather than life selecting for various specific genes, so I lean towards that not being quite the same thing. I still don't understand your argument. An anti-GMO person doesn't make a distinction between artificial selection and natural selection; they view artificial selection as a valid alternative to GMOs. The claim is that it is always better to repeatedly breed plants in order to cultivate some desirable outcome rather than to directly manipulate genes. What would you say to a person making that statement?
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Aug 29, 2015 03:16
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QuarkJets posted:I still don't understand your argument. I'm not making any statements on what's "better". I'm only saying that artificial selection is not likely to result in the kinds of changes that a more powerful tool like gene splicing can. Edit: "tool" Fly fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Aug 29, 2015 |
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Aug 29, 2015 05:09
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Fly posted:I'm not making any statements on what's "better". I'm only saying that artificial selection is not likely to result in the kinds of changes that a more powerful tool like gene splicing can. That's cool. I think GMO proponents in general agree on that. But I think what you were saying earlier is that selective breeding couldn't result in something like Bt-maize. It definitely could, it would just take a lot more time and effort.
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Aug 29, 2015 06:13
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Fly posted:I'm not making any statements on what's "better". I'm only saying that artificial selection is not likely to result in the kinds of changes that a more powerful tool like gene splicing can. I don't comprehend why the difficulty of producing a protein is important. Complexity does not correlate with risk.
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Aug 29, 2015 06:38
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Anosmoman posted:I don't comprehend why the difficulty of producing a protein is important. Complexity does not correlate with risk. On this I disagree. It's not so much the complexity as the range of possible outcomes. Gene splicing is used because it offers a wider range of possible outcomes for a reasonable amount of effort. More possible variation that includes more opportunities for both good and bad is practically the definition of risk.
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Aug 29, 2015 16:11
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Fly posted:On this I disagree. It's not so much the complexity as the range of possible outcomes. Gene splicing is used because it offers a wider range of possible outcomes for a reasonable amount of effort. More possible variation that includes more opportunities for both good and bad is practically the definition of risk. No it isn't.
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Aug 29, 2015 16:21
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Not in theory, nor in practice.
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Aug 29, 2015 16:22
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Fly posted:On this I disagree. It's not so much the complexity as the range of possible outcomes. Gene splicing is used because it offers a wider range of possible outcomes for a reasonable amount of effort. More possible variation that includes more opportunities for both good and bad is practically the definition of risk. It offers considerably more control over those outcomes than "let's bombard the crops with radiation, possibly from a giant nuclear fusion reactor, over a period of time and see what random mutation gives us!" Like, I don't even know how that's arguable - natural mutation is going to do all sorts of things, and you're going to select the one that is superficially most optimal but guess what, you have no idea what other knock-on effects it'll have. Compare to directly messing with the genes, where at least you know what you toggled.
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Aug 29, 2015 16:58
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GreyjoyBastard posted:It offers considerably more control over those outcomes than "let's bombard the crops with radiation, possibly from a giant nuclear fusion reactor, over a period of time and see what random mutation gives us!" Like, I don't even know how that's arguable - natural mutation is going to do all sorts of things, and you're going to select the one that is superficially most optimal but guess what, you have no idea what other knock-on effects it'll have.
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Aug 29, 2015 17:24
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Friendly Tumour posted:No it isn't. I would expect the scientists to explore all types of consequences because that's also how they generate the technology use guidelines that they distribute to farmers using their seeds so that their seeds. For example, to prevent widespread resistance to the proteins that make Bt corn effective, the National Corn Growers Association has these guidelines: http://www.ncga.com/managing-bt-technology/ Keep in mind that these proteins are also used in organic gardening, but in that case the proteins are applied to the crops rather than being produced by the crops themselves. Again, selection pressure from misuse of Bt crops could reduce or eliminate the effectiveness of this type of pest control on both GMO and non-GMO crops. Therefore, following the guidelines to reduce the risk of developing insect resistance is "essential", according to the NCGA. The type of risk above is present because the Bt corn is a GMO. Arguing that selective breeding and gene splicing are equivalent makes me think of comparing horse-drawn carriages to automobiles. Both get the job done of moving people and things, but the huge advantages of automobiles produce different risks that we have to address in order to use them safely. This is also not to say the horse-drawn carriages have not risks, but only to say that there are different risks, which if you read my posts is the only thing I'm claiming because people seem to think that some kind of equivalence is an effective or important argument in favor of GMOs. Attacking a weak argument is just an easy way for anti-GMO proponents to score a point..
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Aug 29, 2015 17:47
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Fly posted:Neither gene splicing nor selective breeding involve bombarding crops with radiation to generate random mutations. Gene splicing involves putting very specific gene sequences, such as those from the Bt bacteria, into the target genome. It allows for some pretty amazing results that are not remotely feasible through selective breeding, which is why people use gene splicing. Mutagenesis however, does, and is used as a starting point for selective breeding. Nobody seems to have the slightest problem with this, and the results can be certified organic.
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Aug 29, 2015 18:15
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Fly posted:Neither gene splicing nor selective breeding involve bombarding crops with radiation to generate random mutations. Gene splicing involves putting very specific gene sequences, such as those from the Bt bacteria, into the target genome. It allows for some pretty amazing results that are not remotely feasible through selective breeding, which is why people use gene splicing. You can use selective breeding and GM to create toxic plants if you wish to. It can also happen inadvertently - we've already made a poison potato with selective breeding. Natural almonds have potentially deadly levels of cyanide so we selected against it for agricultural purposes but if cyanide happened to also make almonds larger or tastier then the opposite might have been the case and we wouldn't know about it until people started dying. With GM you are extremely unlikely to to something like that when you're trying to make a thing drought resistant or whatever, because you need to understand what the gene does, how it works and how its expressed. Nature may be unlikely to produce some things we can make with GM but we are similarly unlikely to produce a lot of the things that occur naturally. Accidentally creating Hemlock Apples or Aconite Wheat without realizing it is extremely unlikely whereas we know from experience we can and did make toxic things with selective breeding. It's then not obvious why GM is a greater risk.
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Aug 29, 2015 18:17
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Saskatchewan Premier Premier Brad Wall wants answers about GMO's from leaders of the three federal parties and it's not for the reasons you'd usually think.
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Aug 29, 2015 18:27
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Anosmoman posted:You can use selective breeding and GM to create toxic plants if you wish to. It can also happen inadvertently - we've already made a poison potato with selective breeding. I hope nothing I've written has implied that I'm anti-GMO. All I've said is that gene-splicing techniques provide more power to produce novel organism traits, such such as better potatoes or even poisonous potatoes that make people ill. With gene-splicing the direct effects may be more intentional (and I offer the benefit of the doubt that such intentions are in the interest of humanity) but the secondary effects are just as important, and with greater power to create these comes greater need for circumspection to avoid the risks associated with a much greater possible range of genotypes. With traditional selective breeding, the risks can be high, depending on what's being bred into the crop organism, but there are more limits on the types of organisms that can be interbred. The risk analysis is different. Saying "both have risks" does not make them equivalent because the risk analysis is not likely to be the same.
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Aug 29, 2015 18:55
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Fly posted:Neither gene splicing nor selective breeding involve bombarding crops with radiation to generate random mutations. Gene splicing involves putting very specific gene sequences, such as those from the Bt bacteria, into the target genome. It allows for some pretty amazing results that are not remotely feasible through selective breeding, which is why people use gene splicing. Pssst.
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Aug 29, 2015 19:02
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Fly posted:On this I disagree. It's not so much the complexity as the range of possible outcomes. Gene splicing is used because it offers a wider range of possible outcomes for a reasonable amount of effort. More possible variation that includes more opportunities for both good and bad is practically the definition of risk. The same range of possible outcomes is available via artificial selection at the expense of greater variation in other random genes. By your own definition, genetic modification is less risky than mutagenesis + artificial selection because it reduces the range of possible variation overall Artificial selection and genetic modification are like different paths to the same destination.
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Aug 29, 2015 19:36
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I hadn't considered this as another viable option because I was just considering gene splicing vs. traditional selective breeding, but I suppose some of the same arguments would apply to mutagenic breeding as to either of those.
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Aug 29, 2015 21:32
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QuarkJets posted:The same range of possible outcomes is available via artificial selection at the expense of greater variation in other random genes. By your own definition, genetic modification is less risky than mutagenesis + artificial selection because it reduces the range of possible variation overall Genetic modification may be less risky with respect to getting the genes you want, and that's the power of it. That type of risk assessment is better understood and shows great benefits vs. selective breeding where you're not likely to get the same results quite as fast, assuming the intentions are to produce beneficial changes. Let me reiterate that the different type of risk with getting what you want faster (via gene splicing) is the risk of secondary effects. I refer again to the NCGA link above that explains just how essential it is to control the use of Bt corn to avoid the risk of developing widespread insect resistance. The risks of going fast are different from the risks of going slow. That doesn't make one thing inherently bad or the other thing inherently good, but it means that we should expect to need to manage the risks in different ways, which is precisely what we do.
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Aug 29, 2015 21:37
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That's an argument against any kind of technological process that increases efficiency. It discounts all of the costs and risks of the status quo. It doesn't mean your argument about greater diversity is any better. The diversity of proteins able to be produced by nature or mutagenesis is greater than that from gene transfer, since the former has the greater ability to produce proteins that aren't viable. Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Aug 29, 2015 |
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Aug 29, 2015 22:46
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Fly posted:I hadn't considered this as another viable option because I was just considering gene splicing vs. traditional selective breeding, but I suppose some of the same arguments would apply to mutagenic breeding as to either of those. ~*~traditional-est~*~ breeding techniques are literally the same as following on from mutagenesis by radiation. It is literally the same process. DNA damage and/or replication error occurs, gets passed on, gets selected for. ~*~natural~*~ DNA damage occurs from various chemical or radiation mutagens or by chance. We merely add more mutagens. so in summary please stop making an argument from 
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Aug 29, 2015 22:52
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Oh jeeze, I hope my plants don't accidentally form a subspecies. It might be DANGEROUS! I love arguments from ignorance.
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Aug 29, 2015 23:09
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CommieGIR posted:Oh jeeze, I hope my plants don't accidentally form a subspecies. It might be DANGEROUS! In addition, everything natural is a known risk that is good for you. Therefore I invite you to a sampling of tea made from randomly selected plants of all continents[1] [1]by taking part in this traditional natural tea ceremony you agree not to sue forums poster blowfish in case of injury or death
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Aug 29, 2015 23:25
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I work at a company that has a technology that reduces the formation of a cancer causing chemical in certain foods. We built a self-cloned (i.e. it contains no DNA from other organisms, just duplicate DNA from the same organism) GMO that worked great in a few months, but food manufacturers wouldn't even consider using it because it was a GMO (even though it didn't contain any DNA from other organisms). Instead we had to spend the last 3 years bombarding it with mutagens and radiation to get it to undergo the same changes "naturally" through adaptive evolution and selective breeding. This process added millions of dollars to the development cost and took approximately 10 times longer, during which food manufacturers continued to make and sell food containing this carcinogen. Additionally, while the GMO only added one specific gene, many other point mutations in other genes were added during mutagenesis. This is an example of how a GMO could be a cheap and effective solution to a problem, but wasn't because of anti-GMO hysteria, and of how adaptive evolution and selective breeding are expensive, imprecise, and slow ways of attaining the same results, especially compared to new DNA editing technologies such as CRISPR.
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Aug 29, 2015 23:29
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Fly posted:Neither gene splicing nor selective breeding involve bombarding crops with radiation to generate random mutations. Gene splicing involves putting very specific gene sequences, such as those from the Bt bacteria, into the target genome. It allows for some pretty amazing results that are not remotely feasible through selective breeding, which is why people use gene splicing. I was being deliberately kinda tongue in cheek, but selective breeding outside of an artificially-lit greenhouse absolutely involves bombarding the crops with radiation from a giant fusion reactor that our mudball happens to orbit. But the ultimate point is, gene splicing plonks some extremely specific modifications into the crop genome, whereas selective breeding and other earlier methods let all sorts of exciting things happen to the crop genome and try to select for the superificially preferable breeds. Sometimes this will result in natural mutation coming up with a clever idea the Accursed Scientists have not thought of. Most of the time, it will not. And here's the thing I tried to emphasize: we have way, way, way less control over the genetic permutations of selective breeding output, than we do over the genetic permutations of genespliced output.
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Aug 29, 2015 23:43
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McGavin posted:I work at a company that has a technology that reduces the formation of a cancer causing chemical in certain foods. We built a self-cloned (i.e. it contains no DNA from other organisms, just duplicate DNA from the same organism) GMO that worked great in a few months, but food manufacturers wouldn't even consider using it because it was a GMO (even though it didn't contain any DNA from other organisms). Instead we had to spend the last 3 years bombarding it with mutagens and radiation to get it to undergo the same changes "naturally" through adaptive evolution and selective breeding. This process added millions of dollars to the development cost and took approximately 10 times longer, during which food manufacturers continued to make and sell food containing this carcinogen. Additionally, while the GMO only added one specific gene, many other point mutations in other genes were added during mutagenesis. This is an example of how a GMO could be a cheap and effective solution to a problem, but wasn't because of anti-GMO hysteria, and of how adaptive evolution and selective breeding are expensive, imprecise, and slow ways of attaining the same results, especially compared to new DNA editing technologies such as CRISPR. You gotta tell me what this carcinogen is and what category of foods it's in.
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Aug 29, 2015 23:52
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Discendo Vox posted:You gotta tell me what this carcinogen is and what category of foods it's in. Acrylamide, so technically it's an IARC Group 2A carcinogen (probable human carcinogen). It's in foods you probably shouldn't be eating anyways such as fried potatoes, but also bread and coffee. Edit: Basically you want to stay away from any carbohydrates cooked at over 120°C (250°F). Boiled food is fine because it's cooked at 100°C, while fried food (donuts, potato chips, french fries, etc.) is super bad. Coffee is bad because of the roasting process. A light roast is probably better for you. McGavin fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Aug 30, 2015 |
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Aug 30, 2015 00:17
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Etalommi posted:That's an argument against any kind of technological process that increases efficiency. It discounts all of the costs and risks of the status quo. quote:It doesn't mean your argument about greater diversity is any better. The diversity of proteins able to be produced by nature or mutagenesis is greater than that from gene transfer, since the former has the greater ability to produce proteins that aren't viable. This argument that the risks are equivalent is ridiculous given the proscribed use guidelines from Monsanto and others promoting the use gene-spliced seeds to prevent their becoming ineffective by inducing changes in pest genomes. Fly fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Aug 30, 2015 |
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Aug 30, 2015 00:18
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Fly posted:Post back when someone produces Bt genes not via gene splicing. Yeah I'll get right on a century long breeding project.
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Aug 30, 2015 00:20
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blowfish posted:~*~traditional-est~*~ breeding techniques are literally the same as following on from mutagenesis by radiation. It is literally the same process. DNA damage and/or replication error occurs, gets passed on, gets selected for. ~*~natural~*~ DNA damage occurs from various chemical or radiation mutagens or by chance. We merely add more mutagens.
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Aug 30, 2015 00:21
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Fly posted:Post back when someone produces Bt genes not via gene splicing. The argument I'm making is not about that. It's about difference in the types of risks that to be considered with different technologies. If these risks didn't exist, then there would be no guidelines from the corn growers or from Monsanto that seed users are required to follow. The risks aren't because the genes are spliced. They are because of a very mundane cause: evolution of immunity among the pests. This is relevant regardless of whether the Bt is provided through genetics or being sprayed on.
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Aug 30, 2015 00:22
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Absurd Alhazred posted:The risks aren't because the genes are spliced. They are because of a very mundane cause: evolution of immunity among the pests. This is relevant regardless of whether the Bt is provided through genetics or being sprayed on. This is correct. Bt resistance is caused because the only insects that survive to breed are the ones with some innate immunity to Bt, which they then pass on to their offspring. The regulations mandating areas of non-Bt crops being planted alongside Bt crops are so that insects without Bt resistance can survive and dilute the gene pool enough with their lack of Bt resistance so the technology doesn't become useless in a few generations.
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Aug 30, 2015 00:34
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