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Scientific Breakthrough Increases Plant Yields By One Third (wsu.edu)
Slashdot reader schwit1 writes, "Plant scientists have found a way to encourage plants to better use atmospheric nitrogen, thus increasing yields by more than one third. The technique not only produces healthier plants and more seeds, it reduces the need for fertilizer, the overuse of which can be an environmental issue." From WSU News:
For years, scientists have tried to increase the rate of nitrogen [conversion] in legumes by altering...interactions that take place between the bacterioid and the root nodule cells. [Washington State University biologist Mechthild] Tegeder took a different approach: She increased the number of proteins that help move nitrogen from the rhizobia bacteria to the plant's leaves, seed-producing organs and other areas where it is needed. The additional transport proteins sped up the overall export of nitrogen from the root nodules.
This initiated a feedback loop that caused the rhizobia to start fixing more atmospheric nitrogen, which the plant then used to produce more seeds. "They are bigger, grow faster and generally look better than natural soybean plants," Tegeder said.
This initiated a feedback loop that caused the rhizobia to start fixing more atmospheric nitrogen, which the plant then used to produce more seeds. "They are bigger, grow faster and generally look better than natural soybean plants," Tegeder said.
This is all a sinister plot by big agriculture to poison us all with nitrogen, amirite? They're just looking for ways to stuff more nitrogen and other fillers into our food supply!
And what happens when the nitrogen levels in the atmosphere are depleted by these Genetic Horrors???
The holy balance of 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide will be disturbed, increasing our oxygen intake, and BURNING OUT OUR CELLS AS OXIDATION RATES INCREASE!!!
OMG where's my tin-foil-hat-equipped-with-supplemental-nitrogen-tank???
\_(oo)_/
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
industrial processing to make it edible and hormone-like effects abound....
Uh, you mean it has to be cooked? Edamame is a delicious dish of straight soybeans........
Also, every food you eat affects your hormones......
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
People have been consuming legumes (beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils, etc) since we were hunter-gatherers, and have long formed the staple diets of numerous regions across the world. Legumes are a rich source of plant protein, fiber, carbs, and minerals.
The internet is not a series of tubes. It's more like a net. Or a network of computers. Or an internet.
Why didn't natural selection already "discover" this? Perhaps there's a big trade-off that hasn't been discovered yet.
Table-ized A.I.
You don't have to be anti-science to think that we need better regulation on GMOs. In particular the Monopoly (or almost of ) by Monsanto on a lot of the base patents when it comes to GMOs is a bigger issue than almost any other with GMOs.... there is more but I'm tired and don't feel like typing more... so...
TL;DR: Political issues with GMOs and how they are being controlled/used in society doesn't make you anti-science
Leave him alone with his paranoia.
Honestly having enough food is the least of the problems with too many people on the planet.
The big problem is that every calorie of food requires the input of 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy, mainly from oil and gas, which will be running out within your lifetime.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
An economist is walking through the park with his son. "Look, Dad! There's a $20 under that bench!" Dad says, "Don't be absurd... if there was, someone would have picked it up."
I think he's referring to the isoflavones in soybeans which mimic estrogen and are possibly linked to multiple hormone-related health issues.
While everything you eat affects your body in some way or another, consuming isoflavones in sufficient quantities which convert into phytoestrogensis a bad idea as hormone balance is especially sensitive to such consumption... well... for men anyway. For post-menopausal women, there have been beneficial effects in studies that show it's similar to taking low-dose hormone-replacement therapies -- ie estrogen pills. There's also a theory that increased soy products have aided in increased breast sizes, early puberty, and low sperm counts... though it's far from proven.
The National Institute of Health states results from various studies are mixed and that it supports further study, yet cautions women who are at high risk of breast or cervical cancer from eating lots of soy.
https://nccih.nih.gov/health/s...
There's also a theory that increased soy products have aided in increased breast sizes, early puberty, and low sperm counts... though it's far from proven.
If that were true, wouldn't regions that eat a lot of tofu have women with generally larger breasts?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The plants basically breed them.
It's important to note that root nodules operate as a very close symbiosis - not exactly to the extent of our mitochondria in our cells, but it's more than just "bacteria that happen to be living next to the plant". The plant roots grow a carefully structured channel specifically to allow bacteria to "infect" them. The bacteria and plants work together on this - the plants produce flavinoids to let the bacteria know that they're there, and the bacteria in turn respond to flavinoids by producing nod factors, which lets the plant know that the bacteria are present and that it needs to work to encapsulate them. When an "infection" is established inside the root, the plant closes off the channel, not only trapping the bacteria, but also protecting them. The plants then nurture the bacteria, providing them nitrogen, oxygen, nutrients, and even proteins that assist in the fixation process. When the plant dies, the extensive cultures of bacteria are released and become free to colonize other plant roots
If you were asking why bacteria evolved the need to fix nitrogen in general... that's easy. Nitrogen is one of the essential components in life; they had to. It's needed for protein, DNA, RNA, etc; life as we know it can't exist without it.
The internet is not a series of tubes. It's more like a net. Or a network of computers. Or an internet.
You are right that political issues don't make you anti-science, but the vast, vast majority of complaints about GE crops I see claiming to be 'political issues' are simply nonsense dressed up to justify irrational opposition. I'm not sure which specific patent problem you are referring to though.
You are also right that we need better regulation. The regulations on GE crops are so strict right now that only one non-corporate GE crop is presently in use right now...the Rainbow papaya, developed by the University of Hawai'i, and even the creator of that one believes that the only reason that one made it is because it was released before the regulations became stricter. Very recently we saw approval of an apple by a smaller company. If you want to avoid excessive corporate control by Monsanto (which by the way isn't actually a monopoly considering that the are several other similar companies out there, like Pioneer, Syngenta, Bayer Crop Science, and Dow AgroSciences) then what we need are regulations that will allow innovations like this to actually come to use instead of being shelved indefinitely, which is the fate of most university developed GE crops.
Monsanto's first generation of GE soybean went off patent a while back and anyone can now use it. Unlike copyright, plant patents do actually expire.
Bollocks, what of all the GE crops like Golden Rice, BioCassava, Bangladeshi Bt Eggplant, and Brazilian golden mosaic virus resistant beans developed exactly for that purpose? These of course are equally opposed by anti-GE activists, probably more so because of how they disprove your claim. Besides that, GE is such a broad term that you might as well say cooking exists solely to make McDonald's money.
Maybe. But then there's that little bit in TFS that says "it reduces the need for fertilizer". Which means less petrochemical input into the food cycle. That could be a good thing.
Have gnu, will travel.
They are GMOs - the abstract specifically mentions that the plants are transgenic. How big a problem that is though depends on what exactly they did. I mean it's already almost impossible to get your hands on non-GMO soybeans in the US, and this modification manages to simultaneously boost yields, reduce fertilizer demands, and potentially improve long-term soil health. Exactly the sort of GMOs I'm actually (tentatively) in favor of.
Since it's transgenic I'm guessing they now produce additional kinds of nitrogen-transport proteins rather than just boosting the levels of the proteins they already use, which does increase the potential for health problems to emerge in those who eat them, unless they're something already found in other food crops. Even if not though, they're far less likely to cause problems than transgenic "pest-resistance" genes, which as a rule specifically code for the plant to produce anti-pest toxins. Even if those poisons aren't an obvious short-term problem for mammals, thy may present longer-term risks - after all an awful lot of our cellular biology is still shared with insects and the like.
Personally, I'd have a lot fewer problems with GMOs if we made two modifications to the law:
1) eliminate gene patents, and with them a host of the perverse incentives currently infesting the industry.
2) require all new compounds produced in modified organisms to undergo extensive independent safety testing at least on par with what the FDA (supposedly) requires for new drugs.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
What a stupid comment. Do you really think that evolution is ever "done"? If it were beneficial for soybean plants in nature, it may NOT have already evolved simply because it may be an area of their genome that is highly conserved due to the presence of other critical genes nearby, or it may be that the soybean genome is "good enough" such that being able to fix excess atmospheric nitrogen has little to no value to the soybean plant itself. Or, it may be dumb luck that this particular mutation hasn't occurred in a plant that survived for long in the wild for other reasons. Larger, more productive plants is a big deal for humans who eat the plant, but it may not be a particularly exciting or beneficial trait for the plant themselves in a state of nature.
By your argument -
If evolving cancer immunity were beneficial for humans, we'd have already evolved that immunity. I guess cancer is just fine, though.
If evolving wings were beneficial for humans, we'd have already evolved feathery fucking plumage. I guess we can walk, though.
Evolution is not a straight line, you dimwit. It is a random process of mutation, with the results of those random mutations being culled at higher or lower rates from the population based on the mutation's efficacy in helping the organism survive in its current environment.