Simpsons Fan Creates Real Tomacco Plant

An anonymous reader writes "So, according to a KPTV newscast, a Simpsons fan with too much time on his hands grafted a tobacco plant and a tomato plant and, ta-da: tomacco! Leaves and most likely the fruit (yes, tomato is a fruit technically) contain nicotine. Delicious AND deadly!" Simpsonschannel.com has a small news piece on the breakthrough, but in a Frink-like move, although scientists have found "nicotine in the leaves", it turns out "the lab hasn't tested if the actual tomato has nicotine in it yet, but they say it probably does."

Comments

McDonald's

[dolo666]

From the article: "The plant grew off the tobacco roots and sucked up the nicotine, just like Tomacco on The Simpsons.

What do you bet that McDonald's will start using these tomatoes to make us all addicted to their salads and burgers? :P

Re:McDonald's

[NotAnotherReboot]

"Daddy, this burger tastes like grandma!"

Re:McDonald's

[antis0c]

Now really, would it be that -bad- if most of America were addicted to salads? :)

Simpsons science is always a reality

[MyDixieWrecked]

I mean, just look at Skittlebrau!!

Hmm..

[dduardo]

I wonder where they got the plutonium to grow the crop?

Let's make our own TV show

[wackybrit]

Everyone seems to set about making the impossible things in TV shows become a reality. Perhaps we need to start a TV show where geeks get laid by hot chicks all the time?

Re:Let's make our own TV show

[JFMulder]

Don't lose hope. NBC is doing just that right now. It's called "Average Joe". See it here.

What to do if your kids won't eat their vegetables

[qewl]

Start them early with Tomacco's! They'll start craving vegetables.. then just give them regular tomatoes. They'll have already made the connection that tomatoes make you feel better!

Also seems like a good way to try to quit smoking?

They are.

[benjamindees]

They are both nightshades.

Tomato plants can get the Tobacco Mosaic virus, too.

Re:They are.

[spektr]

Tomato plants can get the Tobacco Mosaic virus, too.

Frightening. Is IE also vulnerable?

Re:They are.

[daeley]

Is IE also vulnerable?

IE is *always* vulnerable. ;-)

Botanical vs. Legal

[thorrbjorn]

yes, tomato is a fruit technically

Yes, botanically the tomato is a fruit. However, legally, according to the Supreme Court of the United States, tomatos are vegetables.

Re:Botanical vs. Legal

[roemcke]

Hmm... I guess the Supreme Court has the power to overrule the laws of nature.

The return of the killer tomatoes

[HermanZA]

I can see the crowds at the movie theaters...

Tomacco Patches?

[FerretFrottage]

Would ketchup packets replace nicotine patches?

An open plea to the Simpsons writers:

[OECD]

An open plea to the Simpsons writers:

Please, more episodes about cold fusion.

Thank you.

Re:Tomatos aren't fruits.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is knowledge that tells us that a tomato is a fruit. It is wisdom that keeps us from putting it in a fruit salad."

MT

I'm wondering when someone will do the same...

[JFMulder]

... but with marijuana plants. Tomajuana anyone?

Solanaceae, to be precise

[cryptochrome]

The Solanaceae family also includes potatoes, chile peppers, and eggplants.

So not just tomacco on your sandwiches, but also tomatsup and a side of potacco fries. A trip to taco bell would be loaded with tobalsa, in addition to tomacco. Tomeggplant parmesan with tomacco sauce would be absolutely loaded with it.

This is sooo old news! The Reds beat us to it!

[G4from128k]

Its common knowledge that tomatos can be grafted on to a wide range of plants in the Solanum family including potatoes, tobacco, Datura, etc. In fact the Russians made a tomacco back in 1956 (See Glavinic, R., 1956 (Vegetative hybridization between tomato and tobacco). Priroda (Nature), Leningrad No. 11: 98-100. (Russian)).

Now if we only had only had slashdot back in 1956.....

Re:Astronomical?

[spacecowboy420]

Astronimical = 2.734 metric craploads

FYI

Wouldn't work with marijuana

[enosys]

This worked with tobacco because the nicotine is created in the roots and then transported to the rest of the plant. It wouldn't work with marijuana because the THC is produced in resin glands right where it's found (rather than transported there). The roots have no resin glands and practically no THC. (Read this)

In order to do something like this with marijuana you'd have to resort to genetic engineering.

Re:Nicotine not so bad

[DynaSoar]

marko123 sez: "Setting fire to tobacco leaves and breathing in the smoke gave Nicotine, an innocent bystander (in moderation), with potential for improving the brain's concentration levels, a bad name."

A bad name is right.

When the Taino people discovered and rescued that lost Italian guy, Columbus, he saw that they took these dried leaves, rolled them up into a tube, lit them on fire, and breathed in the smoke through their nose. When he asked them what they called that, they replied "tobago".

Tobago is Taino for "tube". It started with a misunderstanding, and that continues to this day.

The original residents of North America have always considered tobacco to be a medicinal plant, to the point of being considered sacred. Science is now finding that nicotine is beneficial to several disorders. Furthermore, there's something in tobacco (other than nicotine) that prevents Parkinson's in two-thirds to three-quarters of people who use it. And yes, that's adjusted for mortality/comorbidity.

As with anything, it's a matter of using it appropriately, or bad things happen.

Re:What the hell...

[benjamindees]

Try hops.

It was reported by Warmke and Davidson (1944) that hop scions grafted onto Cannabis stocks produced cannabinoid resins and this led to interest in the technique as a means of producing such material while avoiding legal restrictions.

Re:+1 Funny

[Godeke]

This was what triggered the comment, although I admit it was poorly executed due to timing. Science is the application of a critical eye to everything, including the currently held concepts. But more than that, it proves its worth by providing predictions, and then having those predictions proven or disproved. Neither is worse than the other: a disproved theory is still progress in science.

If you are watching The Elegant Universe on PBS, you will see that the primary argument against the string theorists is that they theories they propose contain no testable (in the reasonable future) concepts. What made Einstein so amazing was he came up with the consequences for the rules of gravity and light virtually out of whole cloth in his head. But his theory made predictions: if they had proved wrong, he would be barely a footnote.

Creationists refuse to submit to the rigors of prediction and testing. If evolution predicts there should be an animal of characteristic X in the record, finding it after such a prediction helps bolster the theory. Working with fruit flys and bacteria have allowed many of the concepts of evolution to be tested, and have help refine the theory. Creationists point to a book and a failed understanding of complexity theory, with little else to stand on. That attitude, in the guise of being "scientific" infuriates me.

You saay tomacco

[$0.02]

I say tobato

Re:Playing God, with hilarious results.

[Durandal64]

But this article [breakpoint.org] raises an interesting consideration. When I was in junior high, we took a brief field trip to collect pond water to view under microscopes, and one of the most interesting things was how those little critters with the thing called a flagellum would zoom around. This article brings up the point that this device, which is not exclusive to pond scum, is "irreducibly complex": it is made up of several parts, none of which separately would be of beneficial use to the creature employing it (in fact, such a creature would probably die off under natural selection.) The odds of a mutation creating all parts simultaneously are astronomical, and consequently, the only accepted theory that can sanely describe such a thing is intelligent design, which has been hinted at in many different real-life examples as well as probabistically explained by Pascal's Wager.

Intelligent design explains nothing. Please tell me how it increases the predictive capacity of any scientific theory in any way. All the intelligent design pushers do is observe something and say, "Aha! It must have been designed that way, or else it wouldn't work that way!" In other words, it's a tautology.

Furthermore, in an infinite universe, astronomical odds mean nothing. It had to happen somewhere in the universe; intelligent life just happened to happen here. Unfortunately for us, we're just as screwed when the sun burns out.

This theory is currently derided and discriminated against in favor of older theories, mind you, much as Galileo was in favor of the theory that the Earth was flat, because it threatens to dredge up the uncomfortable unknown. But like any theory, the more evidence that is found to support it particularly to the exclusion of existing theories, the more likely it is correct. So as skeptical as I am of intelligent design, I can't help but notice how much of our biological model it predicts. Has anybody heard anything more about this?

It's a load of horseshit. It does not add to the predictive capacity of any scientific theory and is completely circular in its logic. If human beings were intelligently designed, do you think we'd be using the same pipe for breathing and swallowing solid food, thus introducing a potential choking hazard? Or would we have blind spots in our eyes? Wouldn't our bodies be robust, meaning that any part can fail with the rest continuing on? Any flaws of this magnitude in any modern piece of technology would be considered completely unacceptable and the result of inexcusable incompetence on the part of the designer. All of the glaring flaws in the human body are easily explainable by evolutionary theory, but intelligent design is helpless to explain them without assuming that the designer is a complete retard.

Intelligent design is simply creationism in a clown suit, just like Windows 3.1 was to DOS.