Comments on: Animal Genes & Rothamstead Wheat Trial

By: Ewan R

Ewan R — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:15:13 +0000

This is actually (and not something I’ve really considered much) another rather sad side of the hyperbolae surrounding GMOs – while animal testing isn’t a requirement it is pretty much always done (90 day rat trials, multi-generation quail trials, feeding trials etc) and generally from the outset can be seen to be bloody pointless (At least for Bt, RR etc) – and yet the anti-GMO side screams for more tests, more subjects (I was recently in an arguement with a loon who was terribly upset that 40 rats and 120 controls (ie 160 animals killed to provide evidence to support a bloody obvious conclusion) wasn’t enough – one can be pretty sure that for most commercialized GMOs animal testing will have been part of the approval process.

Given the obviousness of the results in all cases thus far this is a pretty unacceptable toll however

By: skepticalvegan

skepticalvegan — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 22:08:41 +0000

Animal testing is not a regulatory requirement for GM crop approval. Some companies, universities, and non-profits like Greenpeace may choose to fund animal research on a particular GM crop either prior to or after regulatory approval but this is not necessary and the same is done for non-GM crops as well.

By: Timberati

Timberati — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 21:48:19 +0000

As was explained to me: GE testing in plants uses selectable markers such as neomycin phosphotransferase II (nptII), “an enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of certain antibiotics, namely kanamycin, that are used to identify materials containing transgenes. In other words, you put in the nptII gene and grow materials on kanamycin– only cells/plants that contain the transgene survive.”

By: Chelsar

Chelsar — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 15:26:32 +0000

I am a vegan, and was looking for others’ opinion on the subject. I am curious about animal testing and use/abuse in the production of such foods. It is a personal and legitimate ethical concern. This article does a great job of explaining basic info on genes, but doesn’t take into consideration the ethical delema that vegans face…it’s not the gene/proteins that are a concern, but was there animal exploitation in the process? That’s what vegans try to avoid. If an animal was used in a lab for the production of said tomato, then I’d like to avoid it.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Fri, 25 May 2012 03:05:29 +0000

Thankyou for this.

I asked Rothamsted how much of the wheat genome was engineered, in the aphid-alarm pheromone experimental lines. Their reply:

“Altogether we have engineered in 8703 base pairs which is 0.00005 % of the 17 gigabase wheat genome.”

I now wonder how these base pairs differ among species.

Input from a specialist?

By: grapedoc

grapedoc — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:20:53 +0000

Timberati,
I’ve also run into these “chemical-free” or “no chemical claims.” It speaks both to our poor science education and to a widespread concept that all that comes from nature is intrinsically good and safe. The reality is that nature is chock-full of seriously nasty chemicals.

By: Timberati

Timberati — Tue, 08 May 2012 00:46:51 +0000

Slightly off the topic, but I think relevant: My wife was at a cooking demo last night. There the woman said that [this salt] was ‘chemical-free.’ A man in the audience said (without irony), “None of that NACL.” Someone asked if sea salt was fine, it was (right, those other impurities aren’t ‘chemicals’). We should not be gobsmacked that so many people lack biochemistry knowledge when so many lack elementary chemistry knowledge.

I am gobsmacked by the number of fellow humans who do not know that everything is made of chemicals. http://normbenson.com/timberati/2012/03/26/excuse-me-waiter-there-are-chemicals-in-my-soup/

By: skepticalvegan

skepticalvegan — Mon, 07 May 2012 18:35:29 +0000

Thanks, I’m gonna add that graphic to the main post. Great comment.

By: grapedoc

grapedoc — Mon, 07 May 2012 03:42:24 +0000

GH,
Your comments are great. Most people have no idea how similar we are to other organisms on a genetic level. I’m afraid the graphic won’t help most of them.

By: GH

GH — Sun, 06 May 2012 21:15:22 +0000

The cow claim makes me think of a slide the professor of a molecular evolution class I took a while back had on her overheads. It showed the sequence of a gene from human and homologous gene from wheat. Quite a bit of the genetics between the two were conserved, and what’s more, most of the changes were synonymous changes, coding for the same amino acid even though the nucleotides were different, so the proteins themselves were even more similar. So, by the cow bread logic, we could just as easily say that wheat already has human genes in it, or that humans have wheat genes (of course since some genes are so highly conserved across species you could just as easily swap wheat and human for just about anything I imagine). Unfortunately I think many people don’t know this, so saying that a gene is similar to a cow gene carries a much higher ick factor than it should. It just looks like using basic principles in a scary and misleading way without giving proper context (much like when people argue against Bt crops by emphasizing that ‘they’re putting a pesticide in the plant’ without discussing any plant secondary metabolites meant to serve anti-herbivory purposes), though that may be unintentional if the people making these arguments don’t have that background context themselves..

If you want to give someone a visual, here’s the slide: http://i.imgur.com/nZFnI.png I’m not sure, but I think it is from the text we used for the class, Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution.