Maybe, but for the love of God, Don't tease a slasdotter with a subject heading that begins with "LINUX CRASHES...." I just about nearly had a heart attack upon reading those first two words.
Re:Is there an "entry-level" for radio astronomy?
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Entry-Level Astronomy?
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Do you live in the San Francisco by any chance? One of the fellows here at City College in the astronomy department has gathered some equipment and is trying to put together a modest radio telescope. I've voiced my enthusiasm to help but he's so far been too busy teaching classes to make anything of it. If you're in the area and willing to help, maybe we can cajole him into putting some effort into it.
When I was young in the early 90, I was madly in love with astronomy. I subscribed to and religously read a astronomy magazine for young kids called "Odyssey" that was published by the same folks who put out "Astronomy" and "Sky & Telescope" (Alas, they sold the title to Cobblestone not long after and it went downhill very quickly) Though I was just a kid with poor parents, I had dreams and invested a lot of thought and energy into fantasizing about how best to budget for my hobby (even though I had no budget). Back then, at a bare minimum, a decent telescope could be had for ~$200. When you add a stand/mount, eyepieces, etc. you're looking at ~$500. For astrophotography, you generally make use of your existing 35mm picture camera and what they call a T-adapter. It would have been wise to invest in a couple of filters also because they add tremendously to the polishedness of your final pictures.
Today, you're probably in the market for a ccd camera (or better). Since I haven't been following the trends for many years, things may have changed significantly. But in any case, I wish you luck, and lots of fun.
If humans were rats we would have cured all major illnesses by now.
Yes, but you would be a tiny part of a semi-formal, well-established, institutionalized breeding program. Your relatives would be your parents, siblings and cousins all at the same time due to inbreeding. You and your fellow rats would have been carefully designed genetically to custom physiological specifications so as to make experimenting easy and meaningful. Like for example, you would have no immune system so that foreign cells can be incubated inside your body without suffering tissue rejection issues. Or you would be genetically predisposed to some congenital disease so that drugs can be tested on you for effectiveness.
I say all this in jest, of course. It is important to realize that success with rats are accomplished only with the benefit of an incredible ammount of control excercised by researchers that translate very poorly to the realistic world human beings are living in. Beyond these initial animal trials, there are still an incredible number of hoops that medical researchers have to jump through before they can come up with something that is injectable into you.
..... approved by congress within 24 hours. But didn't Bob Dole quit congress when he lost his presidential election bid?....Unless some other legislator I didn't know about has now come out with improving sexual experience as a personal crusade.
In his memoirs, the current Dalai Lama reveals that when he was a child, senior monks serving him and the theocracy were alleged to have broken their monastic vows by taking lovers and fathering children. Additionally, when he was about to come of age, (?one of?) his regent(s) was jailed for attempting a coup and died in prison.
Arrogant crap. It's unbelievable what passes for scholarship in modern times.
I'm sorry my scholastic aptitude upsets you. However, I don't think it is arrogant to suggest that our meddlings in genetics are much more vulnerable to the power of the entire ecosystem than the other way around. Quit the opposite, I think it is very humbling to realize that mother nature can often take our very best effort and use it as asswipe.
C'mon now, what he should have said is that corn as we have it today wouldn't exist, and even that you couldn't be sure of...with crows and whatnot... man need not be the source of the crop.
That's kind of self-evident, don't you think? I'm not sure what crows have to do with anything. But I'm guessing you might be referring to the possibility of crows (or maybe other birds) co-evolving with ancestral corn as seed dispersers. Examples are well documented for other species. But if this is true for corn and specifically crows, farmers the world over would be all over this fact. However, I don't know of any scientific evidence for this evolutionary interspecies relationship. I'd be very interested to look into any thing you can present, though.
There's a big difference between GM and breeding.....
Quite right! But those differences often turns out to be multiple ways to skin a cat.
You don't have to know much to get successful results from selective breeding....
Perhaps not, but you *would* need a lot more time and resources (both human and material) to achieve with selective breeding what can be now done routinely with genetic engineering. Since we're talking about corn, an example would be appropriate. Many years ago, a gene called opaque-2 was discovered in a mutant variety of corn that dramatically raised the amount of lysine and tryptophan in the kernel. As two essential amino acids some animals (including us humans) can not produce on their own, the inclusion of opaque-2+ maize had dramatic effects on nutritional health of those fed with such a diet. Pigs raised on such a diet gained weight at 3 times the normal rate. However, isolating the amino acid production trait in the mutant from other undesirable traits took hundreds of scientists ~ 20 years to accomplish using traditional cross-hybridization techniques. Nowadays with genetic engineering, this kind work takes a fraction of the resources at a fraction of the time. The two methods both accomplish the same objective. But why would you want to waste all that time, manpower, and money with obsolete methods?
There's always something that man doesn't understand.
I suppose that is why some opt for a divinely guided world view where it is okay not to seek explanations or solutions to the questions that confound us. But so far, it doesn't seem to have been of any benefit in terms of human progress or enlightenment. We're not going to feed the hungry or make notable breakthroughs by simply basking in all that we don't know. It is good to experiment and try new things - that's what science is all about.
Not necessarily, humans do those things primarily to maximize profit......Corn is a primary example of what I'm talking about here, look up Monsanto's GM corn and it's contamination of organic crops if you don't know.
You are absolutely right! Profit is a higher priority than *natural* survivability. I don't know how information about Monsanto is being filtered through to you. But what they are now doing with crops and crop seeds illustrates exactly the *opposite* of what you are arguing about. Given a choice, they *don't* want their GM corn to be spreading anywhere. Rather than continuing suing anyone for having a contaminated field, they are now pushing to sell seeds that no longer spread seeds or reproduce beyond the first generation. This way, farmers would be forced to buy seeds from them year after year after year. These new crop
Well, "artificial" would certainly be a much more appropriate substitution for "synthetic". I guess you are entitled to your own opinion about what you want to call something. Technical jargon in any field can be irritating/frustrating. But I would strongly caution you to use different words to express yourself in different company. I am a lab technician on the staff of the Biotechnology program at the local JC. I just showed our discussion to a few of the instructors (my bosses) this afternoon. They're molecular biologists and geneticists with experience in both industry and academia and none of them have ever encountered anyone who uses the terminology in the quit the same way you did.
(Two of them have said some not so nice things about you and some of the other posters who have contributed comments. However, they don't read slashdot and don't know what goes on around here.:-P)
In much of the literature we keep here as references, the word "synthetic" has a very consistent meaning. It usually refers to the assembly or putting together of smaller parts - as in the synthetic process of DNA replication or, protein building, or synthetic polymer. The fact that this process of genome transplant is an human induced process can not be denied. But so what? No one is saying otherwise. However, the transplant process has nothing to do with the ability of antibiotics to act against a familiar target which has always existed in the form of the donor bacteria. The big deal here is that *what* is being transplanted is not artificial or man-made at all. As provided by a donor, the transplanted genome comes with an established history of interaction with everything the donor has ever evolutionarily encountered. THAT part of the picture doesn't have any human interaction (or twigs or rocks) involved. So for example, any phage that the genome donor was susceptible to would likely be able to infect the transplant recipient. Any environmental niche the genome donor inhabited would support the transplant recipient. etc. etc.
When a person receives a heart transplant, do you now refer to the recipient as a "synthetic human" who has undergone a "synthetic procedure"?
I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who would reply "yes". The word "synthetic" would be a very poor choice to identify any items referred to in this current context. In any case, it seems you're missing the forest for the trees here. The point is that if the genome came from *somewhere*, rather than out of *nowhere*, any antibiotic that would have targeted that *something* from *somewhere* would be equally effective against the genome recipient.
There are several concepts that often get muddled in discussions of genetic engineering. A couple things that need to be clarified about your comment:
In the context of this current example. A genome transplant simply puts an existing set of genes into a microbe that didn't have it before. It isn't synthetic, it is still natural in the sense that it isn't created by man completely from scratch. So existing antibiotic would still be effective if it can target the genome donor.
Escaping containment is probably not as big a problem as most people think. The reality of the matter is that the principles of evolution works to our favor here. When we do this kind of genetic manipulation, we create something that "works" to our satisfaction. However the methods we use are always very messy and inelegant. A success rate of 1 in 150,000 is mentioned. In order to make the process work for us, we often have to put in extra genes that help us keep track of the bacteria but does nothing to help the microbe live and survive. Our handi-work can never stand toe to toe with nature's evolutionarily derived babies. *Those* guys have had millions(billions) of years to perfect and optimize the process of surviving (and more importantly competing) in the natural environment. Laboratory subjects like the ones mentioned in the article are grown as mono-cultures where you have bacterial medium, the microbe of interest and nothing else. They live like pampered socialites. You put them in the wild and they would completely out-competed by their natural counterparts who have better survival traits like more robust metabolic pathways to better utilize available nutrients or faster response to environmental cues. Within a couple of generations, our lab subjects would most likely be either out competed to extinction or be in such a low activity state as to be insignificant.
So it is actually the reverse that you need to worry about. Our creation doesn't damage the ecosystem, it is the ecosystem that poses a greater danger to our interests. One of my professors gave a great example that nicely illustrates the situation. Not many people realized that without human intervention, corn can not grow. The food crop that we know as corn has been selectively breed over thousands of years from an ancestral weed that resembles wild grass. Left to itself, a corn field would simply shrivel and die because the plants have no way to disperse it's seeds. (The kernels can't jump out of the husk by themselves.)
The thing is humans create/modify plants/animals/bacteria for specific purposes of which "natural" survivability is a very low priority. We grow corn primarily so that it can produce big meaty seeds for us to eat. But for that matter it also becomes the favorite food of many other organisms. Sure, we care about how much of the food intended for our stomachs end up in the bellies of crop pests, but the main purpose of growing corn isn't to make them vulnerable to crop pests, it is to feed us and ours.
So in conclusion, any handi-work of ours from the brilliant, but still learning minds of our smartest geneticists would more likely than not, *NOT* menace the natural ecosystem.
Why is that necessary when we already have GNU? Let the proprietary folks keep their gig. Diversity is supposed to be healthy isn't it? One ought to have options in both code ANDlicenses if one is truly free.
Furtunately, you're offering just an uninformed (and trivial at that) opinion. Unfortunately, you opinion seems to resonate with a large segment of similarly narrow-minded slashdot users. It is particularly tragic when folks here gravitate toward one steep world view without any desire to explore anything else outside of their comfort zone. It is a good thing that vocal narrow-minded elitist views (irritating as they are) are easy to ignore. The fact that diverse stories make it onto slashdot for all to discuss speaks volumes about that kind of site Slashdot actually is. We choose which stories we wish to participate in. The reality is that no one person (or even groups of persons) gets to define what slashdot is or isn't. Instead of helping to insulting others for not knowing much about the inner workings of the kernel, wouldn't it be more instructive to educate them on a subject which you (presumably) are more knowledgeble of? Instead of pushing your own agenda on a public community, why not take the time to look around and listen to what others may have to offer and then make the effort to make *your* contribution to other who need it? Please understand, I am not trying to attack you personally. I'm sure you're a decent upstanding guy. But the perspective of the opinion you've just expressed comes from a direction that hails from the most unsavory part of this great community, one that insults inteligent people and gives us all a bad name.
That's actually very true to life in a bizarre way. One of the most common genetic mechanisms to that takes place is gene duplication. Sometimes, mutations can occur in one of these duplicate genes that doesn't endangering the organism due to the existence of a good spare that is able to take over.
Beneficial mutations often develop this way as functions are added rather than replaced by a modified gene.
American popular stereotype says you DO practice gung fu
Then I expect the same American popular stereotype to have you wide eyed awake in the middle of the night quaking in fear of the whoopass thrashing to be unleashed on you for being such a disagreeable fellow.
...can get the SAME EXACT course of treatment made in China for about $800.
Dude! Are you seriously going to make such a comment with current headlines about food/drug safety in China right now?
disclaimer: I am Chinese.
P.S. However, *I* don't harvest organs from executed convicts, oppress Tibetans, hate human rights, support/oppose the current regime in Beijing, know anything about Falungong, or practice esoteric kung-fu in my spare time. (Did I miss anything?)
Parent has a very poor comprehension of molecular biology fundamentals. But lets start with genetics. Saying retrovirus have been known to be beneficial is like saying puking you guts out with a stomach flu has been know to get you sick leave from work. The vast majority of viral infections doesn't give a flying fuck about benefiting the host when it's main concern is maximum survival and replication. Natural infection by a retrovirus is *NOT* gene therapy.
No guarantee can be made that any DNA modified by a viral infection would be on "harmless" introns. In fact the point is moot when one considers that as a consequence of "alternative splicing", introns and extrons have very dynamic identities depending on what the final gene product turns out to be. In a nutshell, introns and extrons within a particular pre-mRNA fragment are like modules that can be shuffled and rearranged in different ways for different functions. What is spliced out as an intron for making one particular protein can become a critically important extron for another configuration.
The vast majority of genetic mutations are harmful, for all living beings. At least in the real world. The last I heard, ordinary folks are not evolving superpowers despite what Stan Lee and Tim Kring might have us believe. You'll have to trust the nice scientists who tell us that gambling with mutation is not a smart thing.
Not everyone who gets AIDS can afford drug therapy. The vast majority of new infections in 3rd world countries will most certainly not engage in treatment. Drug companies are only making money off "daily regiments" by bleeding dry a very small minority of AIDS sufferers.
Now think about a vaccine. If a viable vaccine is released, *EVERYONE* gets immunized. Get the picture? Not just rich HIV+ westerners Even those who are poor, even those who *DON'T HAVE THE DISEASE* will likely get immunized via global public campaigns of the type that eradicated smallpox. After having identified AIDS as a major factor in geo-political instability, you can bet that the UN (among others) is going to make a very good effort to pump money into any viable efforts to halt/reverse the spread of this disease.
No money to be made? only a fool would walk away from this.
I hear the cynics say this type of thing an awful lot and it just makes no sense. Has there been any actual real life case of pharmaceutical intentionally siting on a cure due to profit motives? Seriously, I genuinely want to learn about historic examples that justify this kind of fear.
Since the new discussion system has debuted, certain features have been less than useful to me as well. I particularly liked the old system where, for a single story, you can choose with a single button click to rearrange the comments to show the most recent first. Now, I'll have to go into my profile and actually configure all the pages to display a certain way.
The way I see it, this newly announced function is kind of useless (and maybe a little annoying) if, even though you have an updated page of the discussions currently being conducted, you have to scroll through the jumble of nested comments to actually find the most recently posted.
On a more serious note, what are the chances that bacteria will evolve a new way to have sex to circumvent this? And what would you call these new kinky perverts? Okay, so maybe the notion of bacterial sexual freedom isn't so serious.
Saying doesn't make it so. My ass is cleaner than yours when you have zero references to back up your claims. China's economy has been experiencing rapid growth for many years. That is a fact no respectable or knowledgeable economist would dispute. You don't sustain activity like that with the kind of resource crisis you're trying to portray. I dare say that the investments being poured into the emerging market by people who know better than you do speaks volumes about the supply of resources like steel. It isn't a big deal at all, the refining method is not even that complicated. Besides, what can't be made, mined, or reclaimed can always be imported. Even if such materials are in short supply as you claim, Any policy maker or national leader in the position of those in Beijing would prioritize military applications in the interest of national security. I may not be a metallurgist but I don't need to be one to call your bluff. If we're talking about North Korea, I'd put my tail between my legs and slink away. But I believe you are working with seriously outdated information about China.
There is an international call for you. 1958 China would like their "Great Leap Forward" back.
Seriously Mashiki - Do you know *any* Chinese history that isn't more than 50 years old? If you're going the bash the evil Chinese Communists, don't you think you ought to at least get your facts straight? At least the other armchair analysts here today stick to stuff that is superficially shallow without being absolutely stupid.
When considering scientists as individuals, I can see your point about no one person being flawless. But it seems to me you've actually argued against yourself with your additional comments.
You know, lawyers adhere to a strict code of ethics as well, they are judged by a council of their peers on their ethical conduct, and if they are found wanting they are forbidden to practice. Why does no one hold them up as shining paragons of virtue?
and yet we make do with the critical services lawyers provide day in and day out. The institution of Jurisprudence via our legal system somehow manages make this imperfect and often despised profession work as an integral part of our society. I think it is a mistake to expect either science or law to be "shining paragons of virtue" or otherwise a panacea that ought to solve *ALL* our problems.
"A" scientist may be no better than the rest of us, just like individual lawyers can be good or bad. But the scientific community, like the legal community, is on the whole a hell of a lot more responsible than that. And the way our institutions are set up are such that no one individual can bring the house down. Rogue individuals don't get far without the support of their peers and when they screw up enough to hurt others, they *do* get punished.
Anyway, to conclude, how about having a little faith in the process of peer review, hmm?
Saying, "MIT guys wouldn't be that stupid" is way way too much faith to be putting in someone.......
How about saying "Scientists aren't that reckless or irresponsible"? In most disciplines, especially health-related, researchers and academic professionals adhere to a strict code of ethics that has the intent of protecting the public for whom they serve. I think it would be rash to believe that these MIT guys would stake their reputations and professional credibility by doing shoddy science and being lazy with their work by carelessly releasing something that will indiscriminately wipe out everything under the sun. Put simply, there is a world of difference between being "smart" and being "mature". Geeks should remember that.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe, but for the love of God, Don't tease a slasdotter with a subject heading that begins with "LINUX CRASHES...." I just about nearly had a heart attack upon reading those first two words.
Do you live in the San Francisco by any chance? One of the fellows here at City College in the astronomy department has gathered some equipment and is trying to put together a modest radio telescope. I've voiced my enthusiasm to help but he's so far been too busy teaching classes to make anything of it. If you're in the area and willing to help, maybe we can cajole him into putting some effort into it.
When I was young in the early 90, I was madly in love with astronomy. I subscribed to and religously read a astronomy magazine for young kids called "Odyssey" that was published by the same folks who put out "Astronomy" and "Sky & Telescope" (Alas, they sold the title to Cobblestone not long after and it went downhill very quickly) Though I was just a kid with poor parents, I had dreams and invested a lot of thought and energy into fantasizing about how best to budget for my hobby (even though I had no budget). Back then, at a bare minimum, a decent telescope could be had for ~$200. When you add a stand/mount, eyepieces, etc. you're looking at ~$500. For astrophotography, you generally make use of your existing 35mm picture camera and what they call a T-adapter. It would have been wise to invest in a couple of filters also because they add tremendously to the polishedness of your final pictures.
Today, you're probably in the market for a ccd camera (or better). Since I haven't been following the trends for many years, things may have changed significantly. But in any case, I wish you luck, and lots of fun.
Who cares what congress does? In Soviet Russia, rats break YOUR spine!
dude, what happened to my meds?
Yes, but you would be a tiny part of a semi-formal, well-established, institutionalized breeding program. Your relatives would be your parents, siblings and cousins all at the same time due to inbreeding. You and your fellow rats would have been carefully designed genetically to custom physiological specifications so as to make experimenting easy and meaningful. Like for example, you would have no immune system so that foreign cells can be incubated inside your body without suffering tissue rejection issues. Or you would be genetically predisposed to some congenital disease so that drugs can be tested on you for effectiveness.
I say all this in jest, of course. It is important to realize that success with rats are accomplished only with the benefit of an incredible ammount of control excercised by researchers that translate very poorly to the realistic world human beings are living in. Beyond these initial animal trials, there are still an incredible number of hoops that medical researchers have to jump through before they can come up with something that is injectable into you.
..... approved by congress within 24 hours. But didn't Bob Dole quit congress when he lost his presidential election bid?In his memoirs, the current Dalai Lama reveals that when he was a child, senior monks serving him and the theocracy were alleged to have broken their monastic vows by taking lovers and fathering children. Additionally, when he was about to come of age, (?one of?) his regent(s) was jailed for attempting a coup and died in prison.
Arrogant crap. It's unbelievable what passes for scholarship in modern times.
I'm sorry my scholastic aptitude upsets you. However, I don't think it is arrogant to suggest that our meddlings in genetics are much more vulnerable to the power of the entire ecosystem than the other way around. Quit the opposite, I think it is very humbling to realize that mother nature can often take our very best effort and use it as asswipe.
C'mon now, what he should have said is that corn as we have it today wouldn't exist, and even that you couldn't be sure of ...with crows and whatnot... man need not be the source of the crop.
That's kind of self-evident, don't you think? I'm not sure what crows have to do with anything. But I'm guessing you might be referring to the possibility of crows (or maybe other birds) co-evolving with ancestral corn as seed dispersers. Examples are well documented for other species. But if this is true for corn and specifically crows, farmers the world over would be all over this fact. However, I don't know of any scientific evidence for this evolutionary interspecies relationship. I'd be very interested to look into any thing you can present, though.
There's a big difference between GM and breeding.....
Quite right! But those differences often turns out to be multiple ways to skin a cat.
You don't have to know much to get successful results from selective breeding....
Perhaps not, but you *would* need a lot more time and resources (both human and material) to achieve with selective breeding what can be now done routinely with genetic engineering. Since we're talking about corn, an example would be appropriate. Many years ago, a gene called opaque-2 was discovered in a mutant variety of corn that dramatically raised the amount of lysine and tryptophan in the kernel. As two essential amino acids some animals (including us humans) can not produce on their own, the inclusion of opaque-2+ maize had dramatic effects on nutritional health of those fed with such a diet. Pigs raised on such a diet gained weight at 3 times the normal rate. However, isolating the amino acid production trait in the mutant from other undesirable traits took hundreds of scientists ~ 20 years to accomplish using traditional cross-hybridization techniques. Nowadays with genetic engineering, this kind work takes a fraction of the resources at a fraction of the time. The two methods both accomplish the same objective. But why would you want to waste all that time, manpower, and money with obsolete methods?
There's always something that man doesn't understand.
I suppose that is why some opt for a divinely guided world view where it is okay not to seek explanations or solutions to the questions that confound us. But so far, it doesn't seem to have been of any benefit in terms of human progress or enlightenment. We're not going to feed the hungry or make notable breakthroughs by simply basking in all that we don't know. It is good to experiment and try new things - that's what science is all about.
Not necessarily, humans do those things primarily to maximize profit......Corn is a primary example of what I'm talking about here, look up Monsanto's GM corn and it's contamination of organic crops if you don't know.
You are absolutely right! Profit is a higher priority than *natural* survivability. I don't know how information about Monsanto is being filtered through to you. But what they are now doing with crops and crop seeds illustrates exactly the *opposite* of what you are arguing about. Given a choice, they *don't* want their GM corn to be spreading anywhere. Rather than continuing suing anyone for having a contaminated field, they are now pushing to sell seeds that no longer spread seeds or reproduce beyond the first generation. This way, farmers would be forced to buy seeds from them year after year after year. These new crop
Well, "artificial" would certainly be a much more appropriate substitution for "synthetic". I guess you are entitled to your own opinion about what you want to call something. Technical jargon in any field can be irritating/frustrating. But I would strongly caution you to use different words to express yourself in different company. I am a lab technician on the staff of the Biotechnology program at the local JC. I just showed our discussion to a few of the instructors (my bosses) this afternoon. They're molecular biologists and geneticists with experience in both industry and academia and none of them have ever encountered anyone who uses the terminology in the quit the same way you did.
:-P)
(Two of them have said some not so nice things about you and some of the other posters who have contributed comments. However, they don't read slashdot and don't know what goes on around here.
In much of the literature we keep here as references, the word "synthetic" has a very consistent meaning. It usually refers to the assembly or putting together of smaller parts - as in the synthetic process of DNA replication or, protein building, or synthetic polymer. The fact that this process of genome transplant is an human induced process can not be denied. But so what? No one is saying otherwise. However, the transplant process has nothing to do with the ability of antibiotics to act against a familiar target which has always existed in the form of the donor bacteria. The big deal here is that *what* is being transplanted is not artificial or man-made at all. As provided by a donor, the transplanted genome comes with an established history of interaction with everything the donor has ever evolutionarily encountered. THAT part of the picture doesn't have any human interaction (or twigs or rocks) involved. So for example, any phage that the genome donor was susceptible to would likely be able to infect the transplant recipient. Any environmental niche the genome donor inhabited would support the transplant recipient. etc. etc.
Let me ask you a question:
When a person receives a heart transplant, do you now refer to the recipient as a "synthetic human" who has undergone a "synthetic procedure"?
I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who would reply "yes". The word "synthetic" would be a very poor choice to identify any items referred to in this current context. In any case, it seems you're missing the forest for the trees here. The point is that if the genome came from *somewhere*, rather than out of *nowhere*, any antibiotic that would have targeted that *something* from *somewhere* would be equally effective against the genome recipient.
There are several concepts that often get muddled in discussions of genetic engineering. A couple things that need to be clarified about your comment:
In the context of this current example. A genome transplant simply puts an existing set of genes into a microbe that didn't have it before. It isn't synthetic, it is still natural in the sense that it isn't created by man completely from scratch. So existing antibiotic would still be effective if it can target the genome donor.
Escaping containment is probably not as big a problem as most people think. The reality of the matter is that the principles of evolution works to our favor here. When we do this kind of genetic manipulation, we create something that "works" to our satisfaction. However the methods we use are always very messy and inelegant. A success rate of 1 in 150,000 is mentioned. In order to make the process work for us, we often have to put in extra genes that help us keep track of the bacteria but does nothing to help the microbe live and survive. Our handi-work can never stand toe to toe with nature's evolutionarily derived babies. *Those* guys have had millions(billions) of years to perfect and optimize the process of surviving (and more importantly competing) in the natural environment. Laboratory subjects like the ones mentioned in the article are grown as mono-cultures where you have bacterial medium, the microbe of interest and nothing else. They live like pampered socialites. You put them in the wild and they would completely out-competed by their natural counterparts who have better survival traits like more robust metabolic pathways to better utilize available nutrients or faster response to environmental cues. Within a couple of generations, our lab subjects would most likely be either out competed to extinction or be in such a low activity state as to be insignificant.
So it is actually the reverse that you need to worry about. Our creation doesn't damage the ecosystem, it is the ecosystem that poses a greater danger to our interests. One of my professors gave a great example that nicely illustrates the situation. Not many people realized that without human intervention, corn can not grow. The food crop that we know as corn has been selectively breed over thousands of years from an ancestral weed that resembles wild grass. Left to itself, a corn field would simply shrivel and die because the plants have no way to disperse it's seeds. (The kernels can't jump out of the husk by themselves.)
The thing is humans create/modify plants/animals/bacteria for specific purposes of which "natural" survivability is a very low priority. We grow corn primarily so that it can produce big meaty seeds for us to eat. But for that matter it also becomes the favorite food of many other organisms. Sure, we care about how much of the food intended for our stomachs end up in the bellies of crop pests, but the main purpose of growing corn isn't to make them vulnerable to crop pests, it is to feed us and ours.
So in conclusion, any handi-work of ours from the brilliant, but still learning minds of our smartest geneticists would more likely than not, *NOT* menace the natural ecosystem.
Why is that necessary when we already have GNU? Let the proprietary folks keep their gig. Diversity is supposed to be healthy isn't it? One ought to have options in both code ANDlicenses if one is truly free.
Furtunately, you're offering just an uninformed (and trivial at that) opinion. Unfortunately, you opinion seems to resonate with a large segment of similarly narrow-minded slashdot users. It is particularly tragic when folks here gravitate toward one steep world view without any desire to explore anything else outside of their comfort zone. It is a good thing that vocal narrow-minded elitist views (irritating as they are) are easy to ignore. The fact that diverse stories make it onto slashdot for all to discuss speaks volumes about that kind of site Slashdot actually is. We choose which stories we wish to participate in. The reality is that no one person (or even groups of persons) gets to define what slashdot is or isn't. Instead of helping to insulting others for not knowing much about the inner workings of the kernel, wouldn't it be more instructive to educate them on a subject which you (presumably) are more knowledgeble of? Instead of pushing your own agenda on a public community, why not take the time to look around and listen to what others may have to offer and then make the effort to make *your* contribution to other who need it? Please understand, I am not trying to attack you personally. I'm sure you're a decent upstanding guy. But the perspective of the opinion you've just expressed comes from a direction that hails from the most unsavory part of this great community, one that insults inteligent people and gives us all a bad name.
That's actually very true to life in a bizarre way. One of the most common genetic mechanisms to that takes place is gene duplication. Sometimes, mutations can occur in one of these duplicate genes that doesn't endangering the organism due to the existence of a good spare that is able to take over. Beneficial mutations often develop this way as functions are added rather than replaced by a modified gene.
Then I expect the same American popular stereotype to have you wide eyed awake in the middle of the night quaking in fear of the whoopass thrashing to be unleashed on you for being such a disagreeable fellow.
no lie.
...can get the SAME EXACT course of treatment made in China for about $800.Dude! Are you seriously going to make such a comment with current headlines about food/drug safety in China right now?
disclaimer: I am Chinese.
P.S. However, *I* don't harvest organs from executed convicts, oppress Tibetans, hate human rights, support/oppose the current regime in Beijing, know anything about Falungong, or practice esoteric kung-fu in my spare time. (Did I miss anything?)Parent has a very poor comprehension of molecular biology fundamentals. But lets start with genetics. Saying retrovirus have been known to be beneficial is like saying puking you guts out with a stomach flu has been know to get you sick leave from work. The vast majority of viral infections doesn't give a flying fuck about benefiting the host when it's main concern is maximum survival and replication. Natural infection by a retrovirus is *NOT* gene therapy.
No guarantee can be made that any DNA modified by a viral infection would be on "harmless" introns. In fact the point is moot when one considers that as a consequence of "alternative splicing", introns and extrons have very dynamic identities depending on what the final gene product turns out to be. In a nutshell, introns and extrons within a particular pre-mRNA fragment are like modules that can be shuffled and rearranged in different ways for different functions. What is spliced out as an intron for making one particular protein can become a critically important extron for another configuration.
The vast majority of genetic mutations are harmful, for all living beings. At least in the real world. The last I heard, ordinary folks are not evolving superpowers despite what Stan Lee and Tim Kring might have us believe. You'll have to trust the nice scientists who tell us that gambling with mutation is not a smart thing.
insightful???
I think not.
Not everyone who gets AIDS can afford drug therapy. The vast majority of new infections in 3rd world countries will most certainly not engage in treatment. Drug companies are only making money off "daily regiments" by bleeding dry a very small minority of AIDS sufferers.
Now think about a vaccine. If a viable vaccine is released, *EVERYONE* gets immunized. Get the picture? Not just rich HIV+ westerners Even those who are poor, even those who *DON'T HAVE THE DISEASE* will likely get immunized via global public campaigns of the type that eradicated smallpox. After having identified AIDS as a major factor in geo-political instability, you can bet that the UN (among others) is going to make a very good effort to pump money into any viable efforts to halt/reverse the spread of this disease.
No money to be made? only a fool would walk away from this.
I hear the cynics say this type of thing an awful lot and it just makes no sense. Has there been any actual real life case of pharmaceutical intentionally siting on a cure due to profit motives? Seriously, I genuinely want to learn about historic examples that justify this kind of fear.
Since the new discussion system has debuted, certain features have been less than useful to me as well. I particularly liked the old system where, for a single story, you can choose with a single button click to rearrange the comments to show the most recent first. Now, I'll have to go into my profile and actually configure all the pages to display a certain way. The way I see it, this newly announced function is kind of useless (and maybe a little annoying) if, even though you have an updated page of the discussions currently being conducted, you have to scroll through the jumble of nested comments to actually find the most recently posted.
On a more serious note, what are the chances that bacteria will evolve a new way to have sex to circumvent this? And what would you call these new kinky perverts? Okay, so maybe the notion of bacterial sexual freedom isn't so serious.
prepare for the headline - "Netcraft confirms it: The human race is dying."
Saying doesn't make it so. My ass is cleaner than yours when you have zero references to back up your claims. China's economy has been experiencing rapid growth for many years. That is a fact no respectable or knowledgeable economist would dispute. You don't sustain activity like that with the kind of resource crisis you're trying to portray. I dare say that the investments being poured into the emerging market by people who know better than you do speaks volumes about the supply of resources like steel. It isn't a big deal at all, the refining method is not even that complicated. Besides, what can't be made, mined, or reclaimed can always be imported. Even if such materials are in short supply as you claim, Any policy maker or national leader in the position of those in Beijing would prioritize military applications in the interest of national security. I may not be a metallurgist but I don't need to be one to call your bluff. If we're talking about North Korea, I'd put my tail between my legs and slink away. But I believe you are working with seriously outdated information about China.
There is an international call for you. 1958 China would like their "Great Leap Forward" back.
Seriously Mashiki - Do you know *any* Chinese history that isn't more than 50 years old? If you're going the bash the evil Chinese Communists, don't you think you ought to at least get your facts straight? At least the other armchair analysts here today stick to stuff that is superficially shallow without being absolutely stupid.
When considering scientists as individuals, I can see your point about no one person being flawless. But it seems to me you've actually argued against yourself with your additional comments.
You know, lawyers adhere to a strict code of ethics as well, they are judged by a council of their peers on their ethical conduct, and if they are found wanting they are forbidden to practice. Why does no one hold them up as shining paragons of virtue?and yet we make do with the critical services lawyers provide day in and day out. The institution of Jurisprudence via our legal system somehow manages make this imperfect and often despised profession work as an integral part of our society. I think it is a mistake to expect either science or law to be "shining paragons of virtue" or otherwise a panacea that ought to solve *ALL* our problems.
"A" scientist may be no better than the rest of us, just like individual lawyers can be good or bad. But the scientific community, like the legal community, is on the whole a hell of a lot more responsible than that. And the way our institutions are set up are such that no one individual can bring the house down. Rogue individuals don't get far without the support of their peers and when they screw up enough to hurt others, they *do* get punished.
Anyway, to conclude, how about having a little faith in the process of peer review, hmm?
How about saying "Scientists aren't that reckless or irresponsible"? In most disciplines, especially health-related, researchers and academic professionals adhere to a strict code of ethics that has the intent of protecting the public for whom they serve. I think it would be rash to believe that these MIT guys would stake their reputations and professional credibility by doing shoddy science and being lazy with their work by carelessly releasing something that will indiscriminately wipe out everything under the sun. Put simply, there is a world of difference between being "smart" and being "mature". Geeks should remember that.