Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Learning (And Harvesting) from Extremophiles

Posted by Hemos on from the long-term-effects dept.

kudyadi writes "BBC News has an article on the threat posed to extremophiles by anxious prospectors ready to exploit their unique nature. Potential discoveries include glycoprotein, which prevents Antarctic fish from freezing, and an extract from green algae for use in cosmetic skin treatment, and anti-tumour properties in a strain of yeast. This article explains the issue more lucidly, but in the end, one must consider the environmental ramifications of this biological exploitation before moving ahead full scale. So how is Tux in danger? Let me remind you of a thing called the food chain and then read this."

6 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. It's not like its strip mining by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is some great white hunter scientist with a cotton swab and a sequencer really going to be a threat to Antarctica?

  2. Brilliant. by musingmelpomene · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's just stop ALL science until we're absolutely sure of every ramification of every single thing we do. It's a good thing these people weren't in charge in cavemen times; the first man to create fire would have been stoned to death for creating smoke, and the first one to create the wheel would have been burned at the stake for making something that could roll over grass.

  3. Invitrogen by Ann+Coulter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Invitrogen patented the harvesting of the polymerase enzyme from the extremophile bacteria thermophiles aquarticus. It's a shame that one company can overcharge researchers by patenting something nature created!

    1. Re:Invitrogen by Lehk228 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      did they patent a METHOD for harvesting polymerase enzyme or just the harvesting, if they patented a method then good for them, the invent something and should make money off it, if they patened all forms of extraction then they can burn in hell

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
  4. Not much bias there, eh? by Aumaden · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This seems like typical overreaction. The concern expressed in the article is that there are no regulations on bio-prospecting. Heck, they even admit, "We're not saying there's much danger of environmental damage."

    And "bio-prospecting" is such a loaded term. "Prospector" evokes images of an old, grizzled prospector wearing filthy clothes, leading an overburdened pack mule and "lookin' fer gold in them thar hills." We don't label physicists "particle-prospectors", after all.

  5. Re:You can't have it both ways.... by DdJ · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If you're going to use the biodiversity for exploitation argument, you can't complain when someone actually starts exploiting.
    Yes, we can. It all depends on how people exploit.

    If the exploitation is done by taking a small sample of the organism and then figuring out what compounds it produces that are so useful, and why they're so useful, and then reproducing those compounds and/or effects via an industrial process, that's a fine thing.

    Even if the exploitation is done by taking a gene sequence from a creature, throwing it on a plasmid, shoving that into a friendly bacterial culture, and growing the shit in a vat, that's a pretty decent thing.

    But if the exploitation is done by harvesting enough of the organism to pose a threat to its continued existence in the wild, then that's something that needs to be stopped (or we may have no more Truffula Trees, for example).