Moosh:] wrote:
On 30 Jul 2003 10:28:05 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On 24 Jul 2003 05:04:37 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

So you don't read Moosh:]'s articles, I have to economize somehwe
****
From: "Moosh:]"
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,nz.general,sci.agriculture
Subject: Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
Message-ID:
Lines: 89
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 11:54:52 GMT
[...]
In the junk DNA there is just about
everything that has been tried, if it hasn't been harmlessly corrupted
over the aeons.
[...]
****

That doesn't mean that it is a "memory bank" Just a repository for
turned off sequences. What turns them on again is a moot point.
Evolution isn't using these if needed, it is being lucky enough to
have a random mutation that confers a survival benefit. And when all
your non-mutated peers are dying from some environmental change
(antibiotics) , you will outcompete them.

But what if a mutation in the past had developed an ability to access the
junk DNA under stress? Would that be as complex as developing eyes
ears and advanced emotions by mutation?

The latter is as simple as falling off a log. The former is far more
complex. What is your proposed mechanism for sorting through the
sequences to find something suitable? What criteria would the search
engine use?

How the living cells control enzymes to repair DNA to such
miraculous toerances may not be fully understood either. Recently I
gave Mae Wan Ho's words about recombination hot spots in the junk
DNA. Here is something else to get us thinking about the
complexity of the life which GM tinkers with, their safety
message based on the `Central Dogma' which is so lacking.


Linkname: The Spurious Foundation of Genetic Engineering
URL: http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0209-01.htm
size: 723 lines
[...]
Alternative splicing can have an extraordinary impact on the
gene/protein ratio. We now know that a single gene originally
believed to encode a single protein that occurs in cells of the
inner ear of chicks (and of humans) gives rise to 576 variant
proteins, differing in their amino acid sequences. The current
record for the number of different proteins produced from a
single gene by alternative splicing is held by the fruit fly, in
which one gene generates up to 38,016 variant protein molecules.

Alternative splicing thus has a devastating impact on Crick's
theory: it breaks open the hypothesized isolation of the
molecular system that transfers genetic information from a
single gene to a single protein.

[...]
Alternative splicing is not the only discovery over the last
forty years that has contradicted basic precepts of the central
dogma. Other research has tended to erode the centrality of the
DNA double helix itself, the theory's ubiquitous icon. In their
original description of the discovery of DNA, Watson and Crick
commented that the helix's structure "immediately suggests a
possible copying mechanism for the genetic material." Such
self-duplication is the crucial feature of life, and in
ascribing it to DNA, Watson and Crick concluded, a bit
prematurely, that they had discovered life's magic molecular
key.

Biological replication does include the precise duplication of
DNA, but this is accomplished by the living cell, not by the DNA
molecule alone. In the development of a person from a single
fertilized egg, the egg cell and the multitude of succeeding
cells divide in two. Each such division is precede by a doubling
of the cell's DNA; two new DNA strands are produced by attaching
the necessary nucleotides (freely available in the cell), in the
proper order, to each of the two DNA strands entwined in the
double helix. As the single fertilized egg cell grows into an
adult, the genome is replicated many billions of times, its
precise sequence of three billion nucleotides retained with
extraordinary fidelity. The rate of error - that is, the
insertion into the newly made DNA sequence of a nucleotide out
of its proper order - is about one in 10 billion nucleotides.
But on its own, DNA is incapable of such faithful replication;
in a test-tube experiment, a DNA strand, provided with a mixture
of its four constituent nucleotides, will line them up with
about one in a hundred of them out its proper place. On the
other hand, when the appropriate protein enzymes are added to
the test tube, the fidelity with which nucleotides are
incorporated in the newly made DNA strand is greatly improved,
reducing the error rate to one in 10 million. These remaining
errors are finally reduced to one in 10 billion by a set of
"repair" enzymes (also proteins) that detect and remove
mismatched nucleotides from the newly synthesized DNA.

Thus, in the living cell the gene's nucleotide code can by
replicated faithfully only because an array of specialized
proteins intervenes to prevent most of the errors - which DNA by
itself is prone to make - and to repair the few remaining ones.
Moreover, it has been known since the 1960s that the enzymes
that synthesize DNA influence its nucleotide sequence. In this
sense, genetic information arises not from DNA alone but through
its essential collaboration with protein enzymes - a
contradiction of the central dogma's precept that inheritance is
uniquely governed by the self-replication of the DNA double
helix.
[...]
Because of their commitment to an obsolete theory, most
molecular biologists operate under the assumption that DNA is
the secret of life, whereas the careful observation of the
hierarchy of living processes strongly suggests that it is the
other way around: DNA did not create life; life created DNA.
When life was first formed on the earth, proteins must have
appeared before DNA because, unlike DNA, proteins have the
catalytic ability to generate the chemical energy needed to
assemble small ambient molecules into larger ones such as DNA.
DNA is a mechanism created by the cell. Early life survived
because it grew, building up its characteristic array of complex
molecules. It must have been a sloppy kind of growth; what was
newly made did not exactly replicate what was already there. But
once produced by the primitive cell, DNA could become a stable
place to store structural information about the cell's chaotic
chemistry, something like the minutes taken by a secretary at a
noisy committee meeting. There can be no doubt that the
emergence of DNA was a crucial stage in the development of life,
but we must avoid the mistake of reducing life to a master
molecule in order to satisfy our emotional need for unambiguous
simplicity.
[... & Fair use notice cut]

Where is there any evidence of this. I think you are
getting carried away with the classifications again. If you run out of
hosts
you just find more

Jump species? You would have to do that before you killed every last
one of the previous species.

which isn't a problem, those who prey on only one species are very much a
minority

Lots of viruses tend to be specific to certain classes of hosts.

Calici haemorrhagic disease jumped to rabbits in 1970s in China, though I
don't know why.

Using pig organs in humans in concert with GM is a risk that pig viruses
will jump and spread through the human population.

What on earth does GM have to do with this? It happens whether or not,
surely.

Because GM enables more horizontal gene transfer outwitting the past
regulatory mechanisms.

Why does it enable more horizontal gene transfer?

Because gene transfer packages are included in the GM process to get
genes to outwit the natural barriers.

What regulatory mechanisms?

Those like the repair mechanisms of the cell on innacurate DNA
copying by itself.

This is just speculation, with no firm basis.

The research is moving very fast. Like Copernicus those at the
forefront are branded as heretics by those who stand to lose power
and money.