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The Genome of Your Thanksgiving Supper

Posted by samzenpus on from the ACGT-good dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Here's a fact you can distract your family with over the Thanksgiving table: many of the major ingredients in Thanksgiving foods have had their genomes sequenced. Biomedical researchers are interested in the turkey genome due to the animal's susceptibility to cancer; botanists are studying the genome of the Chinese chestnut to search for the root of its resistance to chestnut blight; and corn — well, corn's genome is just cool."

9 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Re:pray for a cure for caner! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Caner is a Turkish name.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caner

    Turkey.. Turkish.. You don't need genomes to see that connection!

  2. I think you meant COPYRIGHT, not COOL. by lunchlady55 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Corn's genome is not cool IT'S COPYRIGHT MONSANTO!
    tl;dr google it...

    1. Re:I think you meant COPYRIGHT, not COOL. by proxima · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think you mean patent, not copyright.

      --
      "The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
    2. Re:I think you meant COPYRIGHT, not COOL. by interkin3tic · · Score: 2, Informative

      Monsanto doesn't own the corn genome. That being said, they were trying to steal some of the credit for sequencing the genome, despite doing nothing to help. I can't find a source on that right now though, of the lead scientist opening up a paper an being surprised it read "Monsanto sequences corn genome."

      Anyway, no, the corn genome is not currently owned by monsanto, though if we're not careful I'm positive their lobbyists will find a way to steal it.

    3. Re:I think you meant COPYRIGHT, not COOL. by jestill · · Score: 5, Informative

      It is really strange that you would think that Monsanto had IP rights to the corn genome. You are quite wrong. The corn genome project was funded by public dollars.
      http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2004/nsf04614/nsf04614.pdf
      You can browse the maize genome or even download the data yourself:
      http://www.maizesequence.org/index.html
      I have multiple copies of this data on my hard drive now.
      You can also check out the Idiot's guide to corn at
      http://weedtowonder.org/
      Much of what we know about plant genetics and breeding is due to what we learned from corn. The corn genome is not just cool, but a fundamental model system. It provides insights into the genomes for the cereal plants that contribute most of the calories you eat every day.

      --
      "Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" -- Homer
  3. Re:No, corn is not cool by grub · · Score: 2, Informative


    There's some lobbying underway in the US to change the name of "high fructose corn syrup" to "corn sugar".

    That's how bad a rap HFCS has, calling it "sugar" is an improvement.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  4. Re:No, corn is not cool by Ihmhi · · Score: 3, Informative

    I wouldn't really call it a lie. The jury's still out on that one. Yes, I'm linking to Wikipedia. There are sources cited, look them up if you feel so inclined.

    More thorough studies need to be done with larger sample sizes but from what I've read I do believe that the prevalence of HFCS over sugar in our food supply is one of the many contributing factors to our modern obesity epidemic.

    Part of it is that, pound-for-pound, HFCS has a higher fructose content that normal table sugar. It's not much, but that little bit adds up. Moreover, HFCS is really, really cheap and so it's put in goddamned near everything. Remember when mum said too many sweets are bad for you? Well now everything is a damn sweet.

    --
    Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
  5. Apples, Honey, Grapes and Pears by slew · · Score: 2, Informative

    You don't have to go so far out like agave (something many folks never will encounter except in it's liquid tequila form). Many common foods have a very high fructose content...

    http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000011000000000000000.html

    Ironically, corn (as opposed to HFCS) really doesn't show up on this list because the sugar in actual corn is mostly glucose (they have to process the crap out of corn-glucose convert some of the glucose to fructose to make HFCS).

    The corn "haters" out there that sweeten their drinks with honey and have their apple-a-day, really aren't really in a much superior situation when it comes to avoiding the problems associated with fructose (primarily that the fructose sugar isomer doesn't normally stimulate insulin production unlike the glucose isomer). Although if you actually eat an apple (as opposed to drinking apple juice or eating apple sauce), you probably get enough fiber to limit the intake of sugar.

    Also, something that everyone should know is that a surprisingly common ailment is fructose intolerance/malabsorption where the symptoms are similar to lactose intolerance. Avoiding all foods high in fructose often provides relief for this ailment.

  6. Re:No, corn is not cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The newest gene annotations for corn came out yesterday, and there are many more high confidence genes that the previous set (maybe 45,000?). Has your wife seen the recent paper that found close to 10% of corn genes are missing from some inbreds and/or wild relatives of domesticated corn? Source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/gr.109165.110

    I totally agree it's an awesome genome!