[HN Gopher] Atomic Gardening
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Atomic Gardening
Author : Borrible
Score : 43 points
Date : 2021-09-10 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| frostburg wrote:
| "Creso" wheat, which is a popular cultivar in its native Italy
| and has been used around the world to create other variants, was
| obtained from seeds irradiated with neutrons and gamma rays.
|
| I always mention this to people irrationally worried about eating
| GMO food featuring precise edits.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I'm only vaguely familiar with the GMO debate, but isn't the
| primary concern that they make food into controllable IP,
| locking farmers into a SaaS-like subscription lock in, not
| allowed to replant their own seeds?
|
| Although I'm sure there are people who are just worried about
| the scary-sounding nature of "genetic modification", the IP
| angle struck me as a reasonable concern when I heard it.
| tialaramex wrote:
| For modern industrial farming (ie not you on a patch of
| ground you manage with tools you can pick up and carry) seeds
| are usually anyway purchased in bulk from a specialist. What
| you've described _is_ a problem, but it 's coincidental to
| the existence of GM.
|
| AIUI The spectre of GMO preventing seed saving got into the
| picture by the following route:
|
| 1. GMO opponents feared a GMO could spread in the wild, which
| sure enough can happen, and as with the whole "Vaccine might
| turn me into a chimp" (the Astrazeneca vaccine is based on a
| virus that infects Chimpanzees) thing they exaggerated the
| resulting risk, they argued that it's possible for genetics
| from the GMO to be copied into other things. So, maybe your
| weedkiller resistance gene gets copied into the weeds by some
| means.
|
| 2. GMO developers went OK, we can make a "terminator" feature
| so the modified plants don't reproduce, mitigating the
| problem. Nobody relies on self-seeding of crops for
| industrialised farming anyway and that'll fix your concern
| right?
|
| 3. Terminator is now an excuse to say the GMO seeds are
| deliberately broken to prevent seed saving.
|
| This is especially remarkable because Terminator is a
| specific feature, not included in most GM organisms, so, if
| that's _really_ what you 're afraid of then you'd only be
| opposed to those GMOs not the whole concept.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification, sounds like the usual
| rationalisation dance from when people are resistant to
| something new.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| And just to expand on the above, modern farming heavily
| exploits heterosis (1) for greatly improved yields and
| healthier crops, even when not using "GMO" crops.
|
| This means that while seed saving is, strictly speaking,
| possible, it is uneconomical -- properly fully
| heterozygotic seeds coming from an organization dedicated
| to making them will yield so much more than the second
| generation descending from those seeds (or any other
| natural seed stock) that everyone will gladly pay for
| them.
|
| (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| No, it's not the main concern usually. Most people who are
| anti-GMO are against the gene editing part and its potential
| effects on the human genome.
|
| If you probe deeply enough you realize there's not much
| there.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > isn't the primary concern that they make food into
| controllable IP, locking farmers into a SaaS-like
| subscription lock in, not allowed to replant their own seeds?
|
| That's _a_ concern (along with IP trolls suing farmers for
| infringment after cross-pollination and "terminator"
| features of GM crops's pollen interfering with self-seeding
| of said cross-pollinated crops), but IME it seems like the
| _primary_ concern (ie, of most people complaining about it)
| is the stupid scary-soundingness one. (Which is annoying,
| because the former is a very real and serious problem, as it
| exacerbates existing centralization of food production.)
| frostburg wrote:
| What you mention is a genuine concern (however as far as I
| understand the issue is not precisely that one - it's not
| generally efficient for farmers to use their own seeds
| anyway), but I'm talking about people that think that GMO
| food is going to harm their health for nebulous reasons.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| I wonder if it's possible to DIY this, but using say a beta
| emitter, I just found:
|
| "Beta particles are less damaging but have greater penetration
| than alpha particles, and can cause DNA mutation and cell
| damage."
|
| Theoretically could you use an electron gun in a vacuum chamber
| to cause mutations in a seed?
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Sure, I guess any mutagen would do, as long as you have some
| control over the dosage.
|
| Mutagenic chemicals might work equally well. Would be super
| annoying/dangerous to work with compared to flipping a switch
| on an electron gun though.
| mimac wrote:
| The mutagenesis is not the rate limiting step, its the
| screening of positive mutants.
| joatmon-snoo wrote:
| Fun fact: mutagenized crops are generally not considered to be
| GMOs.
|
| From https://geneticliteracyproject.org/gmo-faq/glp-tackles-
| one-o... :
|
| > [...] chemical/physical mutagenesis and a lot of other
| techniques are "unnaturally" performed "in the lab" but are not
| classified as GMOs.
| SigmundA wrote:
| So is the problem with categorizing anything, nature doesn't
| care about neat categories and honestly neither do we.
|
| We have genetically modified almost every organism we eat the
| only difference is the method of modification.
|
| When does something become GMO? Selective breeding?
| Mutagenesis? Marker assisted breeding? Targeted gene insertion?
| Who decides and why?
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