Slashdot Mirror
Wasps Have Injected New Genes Into Butterflies
sciencehabit writes: If you're a caterpillar, you do not want to meet a parasitic wasp. The winged insect will inject you full of eggs, which will grow inside your body, develop into larvae, and hatch from your corpse. But a new study reveals that wasps have given caterpillars something beneficial during these attacks as well: pieces of viral DNA that become part of the caterpillar genome, protecting them against an entirely different lethal virus. In essence, the wasps have turned caterpillars into genetically modified organisms.
If you're a caterpillar
If you're not sure whether any of your readers might be caterpillars, you probably shouldn't be in publishing.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
You geeks are so short-sighted.
Look, there ain't anything inherently bad about GMO. It's just the combination of GMO with incredibly powerful, greedy-without-bounds, out of control corporations what is possibly going to eliminate us from this planet (cockroaches will survive, mind you).
The day Monsanto and the likes disappear I'll reconsider my position on GMO.
Comprende?
Errr..what? And here I was thinking that most vaccines work by injecting people with a weakened variety of the virus and therefore inducing the body to create anti bodies? Which is different from injecting genetic code into our DNA.
Am I wrong?
Although I would not say 'true'. Science just provides understanding, we can't 'know' anything for sure. I don't think saying 'true' or talking about 'facts' achieves the desired effect of giving scientific understanding the status it deserves. Instead people confuse it for absolute knowledge (like religions claims) and think of a case where a scientist said they were sure and had 'facts', but were later proven wrong. Then they think you're trying to fool them.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
For the curious ones, this is called Horizontal Gene Transfer : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Horizontal gene transfer has been known for a long time, moreso, the mechanics of transfering a gene via retroviral DNA- or RNA-fragments into a cell came first, and only then there was the idea, that we could transfer arbitrary genes via the same mechanism. Thus GMO is a result of discovering the mechanism of horizontal gene transfer.
If horizontal gene transfer happens, if affects only a single individuum, the one getting hit with the retrovirus carring the new DNA and thus acting as gene shuttle. In the most cases, the DNA transfer will not affect the offspring, as the gonades aren't hit by the virus, and thus the genetic modification will die with the individuum. Sometimes, the DNA transfer affects the gonades and either the individuum will become completely infertile, or it will not have viable offspring. Thus the gene transfer dies with the next generation. Only if the DNA proves to be advantageous for the individuum and its offspring, it will spread within the population, and it will take hundreds of generations until it has affected the whole population.
This is different from GMO, where millions of individua at the same time with the same genetic modification will be released at once, and we don't have hundreds of generations to watch the effects to the species itself and to its environment and biotopes.
As a side note: What if two patented crops from different companies crossbreed and carry both patented genes? Which company then has the right to sue the other for patent violation?
It's just the combination of GMO with incredibly powerful, greedy-without-bounds, out of control corporations what is possibly going to eliminate us from this planet
Well, that's not an overly dramatic exaggerated misrepresentation at all.
The day Monsanto and the likes disappear I'll reconsider my position on GMO.
That's absurd. That's like saying cooked food is bad because you don't like McDonalds. Even if we assume that all the urban legends about Monsanto are true, and that for some strange reason they really are these Saturday morning cartoon super villains that so many people take them for, are you really going to oppose things like the Rainbow papaya (university made, by the University of Hawai'i & Cornell University), Golden Rice (NGO made, by the International Rice Research Institute), Bt eggplant (government made, by Bangladesh), ect. on the basis that someone else is doing something wrong with the same technology?
From a 19th century point of view (when Genetics were still unknown), there was no difference between mutation and horizontal gene transfer. It was a small change in one individuum, which could be transfered to the offspring (if it didn't transfer to the offspring, it wasn't evolution at all). And this change wasn't acquired by experience and learning, as the Lamarckism postulates.
When Genetics was discovered, and the mechanism of the DNA and replication was understood, it was clear that this was the main mechanism of transferring information from one generation to the next, and that errors in transcribing allowed for a slow gene drift and thus for the acquiring of new properties. It was never claimed that this was the sole mechanism, it was just the one that was well understood and studied.
Except that McDonald's market domination (in the sector "cooked foods") is negligible compared to Monsanto's market domination (in the sector "agrobusiness").
Yes, there's only Pioneer, Syngenta, BASF, Dow, Bayer CropScience, ect. Ever been to any of their operations? I have. Those are far from negligible alternative seed sources.
Except that McDonalds isn't (successfully) lobbying governments around the world to rule out home cooking.
And what, exactly, are you implying Monsanto is lobbying governments to forbid? The only ones I see doing that are the anti-GMO groups who would ban even publicly funded GE research.
Except that McDonalds hasn't bought out whole university departments and has a thumb on publication of their results.
So I've been told. Well, I happen to be in one of those often accused of being bought out university departments, and damnedest thing, I keep missing those lucrative selling out seminars. Accusations of conspiracy are the last resort of the wrong. If I was willing to sell myself out for Monsanto or the like I'd just up and work for them and take a nice pay raise while I'm at it. Now, if you have proof of this cabal (which must clearly be clearly global, given the genetic engineering research the world over), and I really am being left out of all that good old Monsanto corruption money without so much as a free Monsanto T-shirt to show for it, I'm willing to hear it, but it better be good, because I think you just made that up.