Slashdot Mirror


Evolution Machine Accelerates Genetic Engineering

chrb writes "New Scientist has an article about the Evolution Machine — a device which can accelerate directed artificial evolution to discover desirable DNA changes in days rather than years. One of the aims of these researchers is to create an organism that is genetically immune to all viruses."

2 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Paging Davros! by Artifice_Eternity · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Mr. Davros to the white courtesy telephone, please:

    Davros realizes that contamination from the nuclear and biological weapons used in the war is mutating the Kaled race, and artificially accelerates the process to examine the ultimate evolutionary end product. The mutations are weak and crippled: no more than one-eyed brains with tentacular appendages and with no hope of survival on their own. His solution is to remove all emotions pertaining to weakness, a category in which he groups such emotions as compassion, mercy and kindness, and place the mutants in tank-like "Mark III travel machines" partly based on the design of his wheelchair. He later names these creatures Daleks, an anagram of Kaleds.

  2. beans & legumes by decora · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ever since the dawn of modern agriculture, protein has come largely from beans.

    especially in the America's where cows and pigs did not exist until circa 1500 AD when the europeans introduced them (along with their zoonotic diseases).