Genetically Modified Plants

RAS

ceridwen wrote: »

Hmmmm....."bag garden" - I'm guessing you mean summat along lines I mentioned recently of those sort of "skip" type bags? "Keyhole garden" - I've never heard of that.....

Wouldnt mind some more info on both these purlease...could be useful..

Sendacow used to have a really good school's section with instructions on these but it has gone!!

Anyway read the latest newletter http://www.sendacow.org.uk/newsletters pages 8 and 10 have piccies.

How to make a bag garden - take an old sack (ex compost, food, fertiliser etc) and roll the sides down. take an old empty tin can cut off the other end, to leave a tube. Collect small stones and "soil". Hold the tube in the middle of the rolled down bag, fill with stones and surround with soil. Lift the tube up slightly, add more stones and soil and as the bag fills, unroll the sides. Fill the bag up nearly to the top, forming a column of stones surrounded by soil, encased in the bag.

ideally whack a couple of stakes into the ground to hold it all upright. Cut small holes in the sides and plant the top and holes. Water the stone column. Creates a lot of growing space with basic eqipment and uses very little water. Can be disassembled and moved.

Was discussing using it in refugee camps a few weeks ago.

Ben84

The technology does have huge potential to help us and the environment.

In theory we could create plants that produce more product with less waste and resources being consumed. For example cellulose rich plants that are easily processed in to paper, they would have great potential to save energy and reduce the pressure on natural forests. Another promise is better biofuels. Further still we could design plants to produce a huge variety of molecules for us, polymers to produce bioplastics, compounds to clean our houses, even drugs. Plants could replace petrochemicals and synthesize the many compounds we need in everyday life for us. We could also design plants/organisims which are capable of cleaning waste water at sewage plants, for example removing the environmentally damaging nitrates and phosphates which are difficult to remove right now. The possibilities are extensive.

I'm very excited by the potential and certainly not ruling it out as bad for the environment when perhaps it could help it a lot. However, how much it helps (if at all) depends largely on how it's used and not on the technology itself. Will it be put to good uses for people, and with suitable caution, or will greedy companies use for their own purposes. Sadly we're already seeing some of this happening.

I think public acceptance of GM, with suitable restrictions and caution, is the best option. Large scale public opposition will be simply handing it and all the promising potential to big corporations, who do not well represent public opinions or needs. I want to see this research happening in universities and open to the public. Too many of our battles with technology are battles with big corporation's dubious agendas rather than technology, and usually we loose in the end.

RAS

large scale organisations already own it anyway!

cave_2

Corporations don't own the technology - they have patents on some things they've made with the technology, but you could do this stuff in your backyard with the right stuff, some knowledge and a bit of patience.

Ben84

RAS wrote: »

large scale organisations already own it anyway!

It's a technology, like any other, currently anyone can use it if they have the resources available. Nobody owns the concept or capabilities, although some GM organisims are patented.

The problem with large public opposition is that it will dry up the funds and interest in public sector research while the private sector will continue for their own purposes. We'll end up with less control over it, and the developments will be largely for profit and not for the direct benefit of the public.

Debt_Free_Chick

cave wrote: »

I mean transgenic plants, which have had their genes/DNA changed in some way by people.

F1 hybrids are offspring which come from two differing parents (e.g. horse and donkey to make a mule).

Artificial pollination is just pollination which is not done in the 'natural' way, the genetics is in no way affected.

Hth

So if F1 hybrids and artificially pollinated plants are OK (are they?), then what's so wrong with transgenics?

cave_2

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

So if F1 hybrids and artificially pollinated plants are OK (are they?), then what's so wrong with transgenics?

Basically, the first two are processes which can happen naturally - horses DO mate with donkeys to produce mules, and plants would become pollinated anyway 'in the wild' (the reason you artificially pollinate is 1) you don't have the right sort of pollinators - e.g.bees - in your greenhouse, or 2) insect pollination is essentially random. If you have lots of the same plant with different coloured flowers, but you really like the purple ones, you might want to breed the purple ones together to make sure the baby plants are purple. So you take pollen from one, and give it to the other. An insect would do the same job, but it will jump from plant to plant, regardless of colour.

Transgenics is where people have changed the DNA of a plant in some way. DNA is essentially just a set of instructions. So you might tell the plant to make more of something (for example, the purple colour). Another situation might be that your flower plant gets eaten by slugs a lot. You might have other plant which isn't very pretty, but slugs don't like it because it makes something which tastes bad to slugs. You could take the gene for the bad taste out of the second plant, and put it in the flower plant. So you now have a plant which has flowers and a bad taste to slugs - this plant is GM or transgenic.

I think people's main objection to transgenics is that it's 'unnatural' - the gene would never have got in the flower plant naturally, because the two plants cannot breed.



Edit - just to clarify, a gene is 'an instruction'; 'make this colour', and genes are made out of DNA. DNA is like beads, genes are like the necklace made out of those beads.

Farway

In my case I am more worried about the mixing of animal & plant genes, like adding jellyfish ones to potatoes, no way could you even think was somehow natural and mimicking nature

http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/glowingpotato.cfm

PS, or how about eating one that produces it's own pesticide, yummy

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/10199

SailorSam

. Another promise is better biofuels
Ben84

As i said in my earlier post 10 years ago, i agreed you Gm foods wonderful. Biofuels well these are top of the heap, why worry about the world running out of oil, it's so simple, grow your own.
Now what do we see, rainforests being cleared to plant cane suger, couple of years later when the poor quality land is useless, chop some more rainforest down. Even if you don't care what happens to the environment, the choice is often made in these countries should we grow fuel for the rich West, or grow food for the native peoples.

nodwah

Well i'm a skint ex Glasgow genetics student (20 years ago when this was all first starting..) and I'm still very unhappy about GM at first it seems a good idea but when you think about it deeper maybe not!

Several points- it may have changed now but the technology at first used reporter genes such as antibiotic resisitance to signal that the genetic transfer has happened. Not a great idea to have these floating about in the environment - if you're a genetics student I'm sure you'll know how easily bacteria can acquire genteic material from a range of sources.
Therefore even intraspecies genetic transfer can have a massive effect on the environment.
such effects may start sublty but become enormous, look at accidental introductions of foreign animals to naive environments - eg rats to islands - where bird populations are wiped out, or rabbits in Australia - massive problem. When we deliberately introduce an entirely new organism to the planet, how can we possibly know what the results will be?
Another thing - the large companies who create GM corn or rice or whatever, create sterile strains so the 3rd world farmers cannot save seed but have to keep going back to buy more - what's this doing to 3rd world debt?
Monoculture also has been mentioned before, when we should be maintaining biodiversity - to let Mother Nature find solutions to problems herself - I'm sure she'll be better at it than us!! ( mind you she may not include us in her calculations!!)
Also these strains that have been developed to be resistant to pesticides and herbicides means that crops can simply be drenched with chemicals - not desirable surely even if you're not an ardent organic fan.

BTW if you want to not be skint all your life (like me) get out of science:rotfl: .