4 ms·

Great example of the power of selective breeding.

mbreese 12y ago
Ah yes, selective breeding... also known as the original method for creating GMOs. Nowadays we can just do things a bit faster without all of the waiting required for multiple generations of crops. But that doesn't mean that we haven't been practicing artificial genetic selection for millennia.
- undersuit 12y ago
  Ah yes, validating all GMOs just because we've been breeding cultivars for thousands of years. Safety not gauranteed: The solanine heavy Lenape Potato, sure solanine is in all potatoes, but when did a non-green one make you sick? The "killer zucchini" from New Zealand with dangerous amounts of curcubitan caused by a aphid outbreak in the organic fields. Mono-cultures can happen: The Irish potato famine could have been reduced in severity if there were more variety among Ireland's food crops or their potato cultivars in 1845. While nowhere near as devasting to humanity, the destruction of the Gros Michel banana cultivar and the impending threat of the newest banana-phage on the current Cavendish cultivar aren't exactly a good faith offering on future mono-cultures, GMO or not, being avoided.
  - hibikir 12y ago
    You seem to be making two contradicting points here. On one end, you talk about food safety, and how altering the DNA of a plant means it might not be safe anymore. But in that case, the best thing we could do is to make sure we are always making plants with the exact same genetics: All clones. That's the only way you can tell what you are eating. There are more genetic changes in a naturally bred, not inbred crop than there are in a GMO event vs the untraited plant. Then you seem to dislike monocultures: If you want the plants to be safe from some phage, nothing better than high genetic diversity in plants, which leads to us really having no idea of how safe what we are eating is. We either want to treat them as drugs, and make monocultures the way of the world, or we look for genetic diversity, in which case having some BT toxins embedded in your corn plant won't be that bad. Just ask agribusiness to make sure there's at least 8 different germplasms per bag or something like that.
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    Genetic diversity issues are not really related. It is interesting that we can accidentally select for poisonous compounds. It turns out that plants can make themselves resistant to many pests; by filling themselves full of poison. These kind of issues are well known. See Conjuring An Evolution To Serve You http://lesswrong.com/lw/l8/conjuring_an_evolution_to_serve_you/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/l8/conjuring_an_evolution_to_serve_y...
- pyre 12y ago
  Well, it's hard to selectively breed fish DNA into a plant... So there's always that. :P
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    It can happen by chance or convergent evolution. Mutation rates are sometimes artificially raised to increase the probability of it happening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding
    - dalke 12y ago
      It's extremely hard to selectively breed fish DNA into a plant. Convergent evolution doesn't end up with the same DNA sequence. My favorite example is the protease catalytic triad, where 20 or so different evolutionary routes have converged to the same chemical function, even though the DNA for those different superfamilies are different. The odds of mutation breeding producing a new gene (or more likely, changing an existing related gene to correct form) is incredibly small, and the result would be very expensive. Each generation would need to be sequenced, and the ones whose DNA is closer to the target re-bred. You want the mutation rates to be low enough that the rest of the plant isn't killed, so that's what, a mutation somewhere in the target gene every 1,000 generations? Assuming a short sequence of 100 base pairs, and perfect mutation gives 100,000 generations. Assuming a life cycle of 10 days means this will take over 2,500 years. I deliberately low-balled these numbers. So yes, "by chance" it's possible, in about the same way that a universe of monkeys could type out Hamlet.
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Genes are swapped all the time. Its not just about mutation.
        dalke 12y ago
        The context is specifically "it's hard to selectively breed fish DNA into a plant." Houshalter proposed that mutation breeding was one way to do so. My back-of-the-envelope estimation was to show that it wasn't. What gene-swapped-based breeding technique can put a fish DNA sequence into a plant? I only know of genetic engineering techniques for that process.

Ah yes, selective breeding... also known as the original method for creating GMOs. Nowadays we can just do things a bit faster without all of the waiting required for multiple generations of crops. But that doesn't mean that we haven't been practicing artificial genetic selection for millennia.

undersuit 12y ago
Ah yes, validating all GMOs just because we've been breeding cultivars for thousands of years. Safety not gauranteed: The solanine heavy Lenape Potato, sure solanine is in all potatoes, but when did a non-green one make you sick? The "killer zucchini" from New Zealand with dangerous amounts of curcubitan caused by a aphid outbreak in the organic fields. Mono-cultures can happen: The Irish potato famine could have been reduced in severity if there were more variety among Ireland's food crops or their potato cultivars in 1845. While nowhere near as devasting to humanity, the destruction of the Gros Michel banana cultivar and the impending threat of the newest banana-phage on the current Cavendish cultivar aren't exactly a good faith offering on future mono-cultures, GMO or not, being avoided.
- hibikir 12y ago
  You seem to be making two contradicting points here. On one end, you talk about food safety, and how altering the DNA of a plant means it might not be safe anymore. But in that case, the best thing we could do is to make sure we are always making plants with the exact same genetics: All clones. That's the only way you can tell what you are eating. There are more genetic changes in a naturally bred, not inbred crop than there are in a GMO event vs the untraited plant. Then you seem to dislike monocultures: If you want the plants to be safe from some phage, nothing better than high genetic diversity in plants, which leads to us really having no idea of how safe what we are eating is. We either want to treat them as drugs, and make monocultures the way of the world, or we look for genetic diversity, in which case having some BT toxins embedded in your corn plant won't be that bad. Just ask agribusiness to make sure there's at least 8 different germplasms per bag or something like that.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  Genetic diversity issues are not really related. It is interesting that we can accidentally select for poisonous compounds. It turns out that plants can make themselves resistant to many pests; by filling themselves full of poison. These kind of issues are well known. See Conjuring An Evolution To Serve You http://lesswrong.com/lw/l8/conjuring_an_evolution_to_serve_you/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/l8/conjuring_an_evolution_to_serve_y...
pyre 12y ago
Well, it's hard to selectively breed fish DNA into a plant... So there's always that. :P
- Houshalter 12y ago
  It can happen by chance or convergent evolution. Mutation rates are sometimes artificially raised to increase the probability of it happening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding
  - dalke 12y ago
    It's extremely hard to selectively breed fish DNA into a plant. Convergent evolution doesn't end up with the same DNA sequence. My favorite example is the protease catalytic triad, where 20 or so different evolutionary routes have converged to the same chemical function, even though the DNA for those different superfamilies are different. The odds of mutation breeding producing a new gene (or more likely, changing an existing related gene to correct form) is incredibly small, and the result would be very expensive. Each generation would need to be sequenced, and the ones whose DNA is closer to the target re-bred. You want the mutation rates to be low enough that the rest of the plant isn't killed, so that's what, a mutation somewhere in the target gene every 1,000 generations? Assuming a short sequence of 100 base pairs, and perfect mutation gives 100,000 generations. Assuming a life cycle of 10 days means this will take over 2,500 years. I deliberately low-balled these numbers. So yes, "by chance" it's possible, in about the same way that a universe of monkeys could type out Hamlet.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Genes are swapped all the time. Its not just about mutation.
      - dalke 12y ago
        The context is specifically "it's hard to selectively breed fish DNA into a plant." Houshalter proposed that mutation breeding was one way to do so. My back-of-the-envelope estimation was to show that it wasn't. What gene-swapped-based breeding technique can put a fish DNA sequence into a plant? I only know of genetic engineering techniques for that process.