On Thu, 15 May 2003 14:19:15 +0200, Tim
wrote:

On Thu, 15 May 2003 12:46:41 +0100, Stephen Howard
wrote:

In other words, nature sorts it out in its own inimitable fashion.
Ah, but it's not inimitable, is it ? That's what GE is. Imitating.

Imitating what, precisely? Whipping a spare gene out of a fish and
whacking it into a cabbage? What's that imitating??

Ever tried crossing a Leek with a Honeysuckle? Had any success?
Most likely not, because somewhere down the line evolution said
'uh-huh, no can do'.
That's a very simplistic view of evolution, isn't it?
You and I know there's more to it than that.

Simplistic it may be, but it is wrong?
In as much as saying "the bee wanted to suck nectar so eveolved a longer
proboscis" is wrong. Certainly misleading.

There are lots of specialisms in nature where life has adapted to take
advantage of the local resources - are you saying that bees ( etc )
won't evolve to meet new environments? And what if they can't?

I quite agree there - but in that case we act as mere matchmakers.
You can bring together two people who might not normally meet, but
that doesn't mean they'll get on with each other. And if they do get
on, perhaps it will be in unexpected ways.

Going on from your matchmaking analogy, I'd see it as rather like getting a
shirt or tie that you saw someone else wearing, and looks good, and get
"your" person to put it on. Only one item, so you can see if it looks good
on them. Sometimes it will, sometimes it won't.

Yes, and then they can whip it off if they look like a plonker and the
worst that happens is everyone else gets to s******.
Make that kind of mistake at the gene level and you're talking about a
problem an order of magnitude more serious than the embarrassment of a
cheesy shirt.

The point here is that there's a lot of interplay that goes on behind
the scenes that I'm not convinced we fully understand as yet.
True. I don't think many would disagree there.


In reality I'd say it's more like two buckets of sand being mixed up.
So, what would be less likely to produce any great unexpected changes -
mixing 2 buckets of sand, or just swapping a couple of grains over?

But sand is inert - it won't evolve, mutate or otherwise change its
properties. It's a poor analogy for a gene.

All analogies are poor. But do you see what I was trying to say ?

I saw the analogy...that what's being attempted is so small as to be
hardly worth consideration - but it fails to acknowledge the fact that
once the operation is done it may create unexpected results in unknown
quarters.


I rather feel that nature's methods make your scalpel look like a blunt
sword.
It's not MY scalpel. If you just fuse germ cells, as happend in the
development of modern wheat strains for exaple, who knows what you're
making? Reduce the number of changes being made, and you have more
chance of finding any problems.

It's that element of 'chance' that's the problem, you see.
It's just not good enough to say 'hey, we can dabble with this and
tweak that.... and hope to hell we catch any adverse effects'.

Well, it's not just hoping, they should be looking pretty hard.

Yes, they should be..but y'know, it's 5.30 on a Friday afternoon, and
there's a booze-up going down and who really cares if some small
beetle in some distant part of the globe suddenly finds that "fings
ain't what they used to be".
Human nature.
It gets even tougher when no-one even knows that beetle exists.

And just when d'you stop looking?

That's exactly the sort of question that has to be answered. And I don't
have an answer. But can only be answered by careful testing and discussion,
not by joining either of the entrenched camps and slinging mud and
accusations at each other, which seems to be happening more and more often.
So far we've managed to not insult each other after so much writing. Is
this a record for newsgroups?

I agree, and I feel that such questions have yet to be answered -
which is why I'm opposed to dabbling with nature at this level at this
time.
Don't misunderstand me, I look at what's being proposed with a degree
of hope - I don't dismiss the prospects out of some vague religious
beliefs or an irrational fear of the future...rather I fear FOR the
future.
We haven't even finished cataloging the full diversity of life on
Earth, we haven't even cured the common cold... and there are still
people out there who think a person's beliefs or skin colour makes
them beneath consideration.
We're trying to run before we can even crawl.

And yeah, it's refreshing to get stuck into a thread and be able to
stick to the issues - but I suspect that's because both you and I are
more interested in the debate rather than cheap point-scoring.

The balance of nature isn't relevant to transgenic plants??

I don't think it is directly relevant to our discussion at the moment.
Generally yes. But, with teh right approach and development, maybe GM
plants could provide a way of gently easing them out of thier deadlocked
pesitcide use in the future. Which would surely be a good thing.

There are already other means of doing that. Sure, they require more
time and effort... and ( here it comes ) money!
If you'd have said 'nemetodes' to a geezer planting his spuds half
century ago, he'd have probably wondered whether to kiss you or knee
you in the nuts.
I agree that there's room for development, I just feel GM is the wrong
path.

Without those unknown genes, how many holes will you create, and what
will fill them?
But we're not talking about building organisms from scratch, where there
would be huge great holes all over the genome. We're talking about
taking a whole genome and adding/changing just one or two genes.

So you have smaller holes, is all. And small holes have an annoying
habit of becoming large holes.

...some heal up.

Only some though...it only takes one.

Using a material analogy. No, you'd have little patches of different a
colour rather than holes.

Hole...patch of different colour...extra lump...it's still something
that's changed - and it has an effect that's proportionally greater
further on down ( or up ) the line.... a cascade effect.

And as you well know, the gene stands at the tip of the inverted
pyramid and interacts all the way up and through the plant's whole
structure...

CAN do, depending on the gene and where it is. Most genes are only active
for short periods and only in certain tissues. Which is why you don't get
red, scented roots on a red, scented rose bush. Those genes are only
activated in the relevant part(s) and the relevant time(s).

That's fine - in a self-contained environment. I'm not supposing that
GM will turn out plants that get up out of the pot and start eating
babies - rather the results of the modifications will have
ramifications further away.

which then interacts with other organisms in the same
fashion... and so on ad infinitum. I'm not convinced that anyone is
fully aware of just what the knock-on effects might be.

No one is saying they are, except maybe the multi-nationals, but no-one
believes them anyway (at least I hope not).

That's the nub of the matter.
You and I could argue the finer points until we're blue in the face -
but until there is absolute certainty as to the effects of GM then a
debate is all it should remain.
It's just too big and too fundamental an issue to even consider toying
with in the real world whilst words like 'might', 'chance' and
'maybe' still apply.



--
Stephen Howard - Woodwind repairs & period restorations
www.shwoodwind.co.uk
Emails to: showard{whoisat}shwoodwind{dot}co{dot}uk