4 ms·

Is this really a surprise to anybody? Create a gene complex which is hugely advantageous, place it in a species well known for horizontal gene transfer, then gr

Is this really a surprise to anybody? Create a gene complex which is hugely advantageous, place it in a species well known for horizontal gene transfer, then grow them in an uncontrolled fashion in an environment with huge selection pressure for spreading that gene complex... This is what really annoys me about GM plants; genetic engineering has the possibility to be so incredibly beneficial, but instead it seems to being used in the most kack-handed way possible. Instead of producing plants that can cope with increased levels of pesticide (this encouraging the use of even more pesticide!), why not produce plants with, e.g., much bigger seed heads? That would give increased crop yield, plus you'd get negative selection pressure for horizontal gene transfer --- the trait would be disadvantageous for weeds and so wouldn't be selected for.

x5n1 11y ago
I think we should almost assume by default that anything put out in the environment will spread to other plants. Once we assume that then perhaps we can wield our tools better?
seunosewa 11y ago
Why would bigger seedheads be disadvantageous for weeds?
- david-given 11y ago
  Because bigger seedheads cost more. Crops have lots of spare energy, because they're looked after by human farmers. This isn't a problem for them. It is a problem for weeds --- their energy budgets are already at equilibrium based on their environment. Allocating more of their energy budget to a bigger seedhead means less energy for doing other things, which would put them at a disadvantage. As an example, look how badly most of our engineered crops do in the wild; there's massive selection pressure against the engineering that makes them useful to us.
ino 11y ago
> why not produce plants with, e.g., much bigger seed heads? How about "Why not produce plants that don't taste like shit?" The worst thing about living in Berlin (coming from Portugal) is that I can't find tomatoes and other vegetables that have a good taste (or smell). Why not use GM to make a tomato with a great taste that you can smell from a distance?
- a_bonobo 11y ago
  One of the first commercially sold GM plants was the "Flavr Savr" (yes that title!) tomato. This tomato used GM tech to reverse some things we humans introduced in the tomato breeding process (lack of taste due to a short ripening process, for example). It was available in the US (after FDA approval) from 94 to 97. The company went under due to mismanagement and a bit of GM apprehension. There are many, many more similar projects underway, but nowadays the public apprehension is even bigger, so investors are reluctant to invest in such technology.
  - timthorn 11y ago
    > nowadays the public apprehension is even bigger Really? The mood in the UK feels much more accepting than it did a decade ago.
- collyw 11y ago
  As you have noticed, there are fine tasting tomatoes already, so its likely not a genetic thing, more that they get picked too early.
- david-given 11y ago
  I have it on good authority (i.e. I heard it on Radio 4) that the enzymes that make tomatoes taste good break down at low temperatures; which means that if you refrigerate your tomatoes they taste painfully bland. Of course, you have to find tomatoes which haven't been refrigerated anywhere in their supply chain before this becomes worthwhile. But you might want to check out your local farmer's markets. (Growing up in Britain, I had to go to Cyprus before I realised that tomatoes didn't have to taste like little bland paper bags full of mucus.)
qbrass 11y ago
>why not produce plants with, e.g., much bigger seed heads? That would give increased crop yield, plus you'd get negative selection pressure for horizontal gene transfer --- the trait would be disadvantageous for weeds and so wouldn't be selected for. The higher energy requirements make crops more susceptible to weeds, which exacerbates the problem you were trying to solve.
vidi_vici_veni 11y ago
Creating "much bigger seed heads" is one of those things that sounds much easier than it is. For one, grain crops like wheat have pretty much approached the limit of what's called "harvest index" -- the ratio of the seed head to the rest of the plant in terms of biomass. Any further and the seed head becomes to heavy to support and the plants fall over before harvest. But more importantly, things like this come down to the difference between qualitative traits(traits like those in Mendel's peas, where a single or a couple genes control the trait and it's inherited in a mendelian fashion) versus quantitative traits(traits controlled by many genes, like skin color in humans, where the distribution of traits within a population takes the form of a bell curve). Glyphosate works by inhibiting the action of a single enzyme, so a single gene coded to produce a variant of the enzyme resistant to the chemical, or an enzyme that can degrade glyphosate, can confer resistance. The yield of a plant and how it distributes its resources however are hugely complex traits that not only involve essentially every gene in the plant in some way, but also environmental factors. It's still simply more effective to use traditional methods, crossing different plants and performing multiple rounds of selection based on yield, than it is to use biotechnology.
Laforet 11y ago
Because addition of a single drug resistant trait is simple and the benefits are immediately observable. There are some experimental GM crop strains aimed at achieving better nutrient levels (golden rice, high lysine maize) or even better, improved photosynthetic efficiency, but these are much harder to commericalise for the lack of a single marketable "gimmick"
jonnathanson 11y ago
Pesticides are the business model. These crops are being developed by companies like Monsanto, which make and sell the pesticides farmers use. They then turn around and sell the pesticide-resistant corn seed (or wheat seed, or oilseed, or what have you). So you, the farmer, have to buy both the pesticide and the resistant crops every cycle. You're locked into the ecosystem. Pesticides will be the focus until some agribusiness company finds a more profitable model, or until this model is somehow regulated.
sampo 11y ago
> why not produce plants with, e.g., much bigger seed heads? The energy to produce the biomass in the seeds still has to come from somewhere, from photosynthesis. They cannot create energy from nothing by just changing a couple of genes. Some people are working on a more energy-efficient version of photosynthesis, but progress has not been fast.

x5n1 11y ago

I think we should almost assume by default that anything put out in the environment will spread to other plants. Once we assume that then perhaps we can wield our tools better?

seunosewa 11y ago

Why would bigger seedheads be disadvantageous for weeds?

david-given 11y ago
Because bigger seedheads cost more. Crops have lots of spare energy, because they're looked after by human farmers. This isn't a problem for them. It is a problem for weeds --- their energy budgets are already at equilibrium based on their environment. Allocating more of their energy budget to a bigger seedhead means less energy for doing other things, which would put them at a disadvantage. As an example, look how badly most of our engineered crops do in the wild; there's massive selection pressure against the engineering that makes them useful to us.

ino 11y ago

> why not produce plants with, e.g., much bigger seed heads? How about "Why not produce plants that don't taste like shit?" The worst thing about living in Berlin (coming from Portugal) is that I can't find tomatoes and other vegetables that have a good taste (or smell). Why not use GM to make a tomato with a great taste that you can smell from a distance?

a_bonobo 11y ago
One of the first commercially sold GM plants was the "Flavr Savr" (yes that title!) tomato. This tomato used GM tech to reverse some things we humans introduced in the tomato breeding process (lack of taste due to a short ripening process, for example). It was available in the US (after FDA approval) from 94 to 97. The company went under due to mismanagement and a bit of GM apprehension. There are many, many more similar projects underway, but nowadays the public apprehension is even bigger, so investors are reluctant to invest in such technology.
- timthorn 11y ago
  > nowadays the public apprehension is even bigger Really? The mood in the UK feels much more accepting than it did a decade ago.
collyw 11y ago
As you have noticed, there are fine tasting tomatoes already, so its likely not a genetic thing, more that they get picked too early.
david-given 11y ago
I have it on good authority (i.e. I heard it on Radio 4) that the enzymes that make tomatoes taste good break down at low temperatures; which means that if you refrigerate your tomatoes they taste painfully bland. Of course, you have to find tomatoes which haven't been refrigerated anywhere in their supply chain before this becomes worthwhile. But you might want to check out your local farmer's markets. (Growing up in Britain, I had to go to Cyprus before I realised that tomatoes didn't have to taste like little bland paper bags full of mucus.)

qbrass 11y ago

>why not produce plants with, e.g., much bigger seed heads? That would give increased crop yield, plus you'd get negative selection pressure for horizontal gene transfer --- the trait would be disadvantageous for weeds and so wouldn't be selected for. The higher energy requirements make crops more susceptible to weeds, which exacerbates the problem you were trying to solve.

vidi_vici_veni 11y ago

Creating "much bigger seed heads" is one of those things that sounds much easier than it is. For one, grain crops like wheat have pretty much approached the limit of what's called "harvest index" -- the ratio of the seed head to the rest of the plant in terms of biomass. Any further and the seed head becomes to heavy to support and the plants fall over before harvest. But more importantly, things like this come down to the difference between qualitative traits(traits like those in Mendel's peas, where a single or a couple genes control the trait and it's inherited in a mendelian fashion) versus quantitative traits(traits controlled by many genes, like skin color in humans, where the distribution of traits within a population takes the form of a bell curve). Glyphosate works by inhibiting the action of a single enzyme, so a single gene coded to produce a variant of the enzyme resistant to the chemical, or an enzyme that can degrade glyphosate, can confer resistance. The yield of a plant and how it distributes its resources however are hugely complex traits that not only involve essentially every gene in the plant in some way, but also environmental factors. It's still simply more effective to use traditional methods, crossing different plants and performing multiple rounds of selection based on yield, than it is to use biotechnology.

Laforet 11y ago

Because addition of a single drug resistant trait is simple and the benefits are immediately observable. There are some experimental GM crop strains aimed at achieving better nutrient levels (golden rice, high lysine maize) or even better, improved photosynthetic efficiency, but these are much harder to commericalise for the lack of a single marketable "gimmick"

jonnathanson 11y ago

Pesticides are the business model. These crops are being developed by companies like Monsanto, which make and sell the pesticides farmers use. They then turn around and sell the pesticide-resistant corn seed (or wheat seed, or oilseed, or what have you). So you, the farmer, have to buy both the pesticide and the resistant crops every cycle. You're locked into the ecosystem. Pesticides will be the focus until some agribusiness company finds a more profitable model, or until this model is somehow regulated.

sampo 11y ago

> why not produce plants with, e.g., much bigger seed heads? The energy to produce the biomass in the seeds still has to come from somewhere, from photosynthesis. They cannot create energy from nothing by just changing a couple of genes. Some people are working on a more energy-efficient version of photosynthesis, but progress has not been fast.