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#31
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Greed driving plant science
A Fiat shares a lot of physical characteristics with a Lamborgini.
You don't care, I say that there is some difference. Humans share lots of genes with the mouse. We share ~99% of the genes. However, religious and ethical believes of many people might tell them that is not the same to eat rat, pig, human or chicken. Religious and cultural differences aside, I think having rats with a complete set of the human immune system running around in the sewer systems of the world is not a good idea either. Each organism has it's niche and broadening might not be a good idea. It might expose us to unknown pathogens. Jim Webster wrote: Oz wrote in message ... writes would you care if grampa's genes where in your pigs? No. Why should I? I wouldn't care if some of my genes were in a pig. We share lots of genes with pigs anyway. latest figures was we are 300 genes different from mice, which isn't a lot in 30,000+ genes. -- Jim Webster "The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind" 'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami' |
#32
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Greed driving plant science
Spain does not export oil to America. Today it's coasts are covered with oil.
Who would have thought! I know about shuch things as continents but corn travels in ships. Jim Webster wrote: wrote in message ... Jim Webster wrote: wrote in message They thought the same in USA. The GM corn ended up in México. Corn can travel across continents, and does so regularly. just check your map, there didn't use to be a continental land bridge between Europe and South America Corn can travel across continents, and does so regularly. "The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind" as has been pointed out to you, there is no land bridge so it cannot travel across a continent, and there is also no trade in maize out of Europe. -- Jim Webster "The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind" 'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami' -- Jim Webster "The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind" 'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami' . |
#33
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Greed driving plant science
Hi Marcus
You could always follow the recommendations I make in the http://www.molecularfarming.com/safety.html section of MolecularFarming.com. DNA marking with GFP or firefly luciferase, Terminator gene technology, Chloroplast engineering - or simply use Tobacco, Hemp and non-food plants. A 'blanket ban' would rob the world of an edible vaccine which could possibly save 20 million African children a year. "Marcus Williamson" wrote in message ... But there need to be much better plans to keep this kind of thing from being able to happen. The only possible solution which will work is to forbid the growing of pharmaceutical plants completely. Any other approach is guaranteed to lead to contamination of the food supply, as with StarLink and Prodigene... regards Marcus |
#34
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Greed driving plant science
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#35
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Greed driving plant science
Gordon Couger writes
If they put human genes in hogs they it will take some doing to genetically cripple them so they can't make it in the wild. They already have. Organs, transplanting for the (eventual) use of. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
#36
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Greed driving plant science
Oz wrote: writes A Fiat shares a lot of physical characteristics with a Lamborgini. You don't care, I say that there is some difference. Humans share lots of genes with the mouse. We share ~99% of the genes. However, religious and ethical believes of many people might tell them that is not the same to eat rat, pig, human or chicken. OK so just having a whole bunch of genes in common doesn't turn a sheep into a pig. Right. Now what is the simplest solution? If it looks like a sheep, baaas like a sheep and tastes like a sheep it's a sheep. If a certain percentage of the population is deadly allergic to ei. peanuts and if someone puts the allergenic genes into corn. It will still be corn, but now how can the allergic people tell? It looks like corn, it might taste like corn, but now they can die from it. http://www.aboutpeanuts.com/win98pg5.htm Profile of Peanut Allergy With Increased Exposure Comes Increased Risk If you are religious and you don't eat human meat and somebody puts all the human genes that encode for the human inmune system into a cow or pig (Ok, Ok, put just those genes that make human's immune system different from the pig's or cow's). You will still be eating cow or pig, but are they? Now the pig has been exposed and has had similar reactions to the pathogens that we humans are susceptible to. Hepatitis anybody? I mean, that is why religion has some taboos about consuming some foods or preparing them in certain ways, isn't it? (ok some religious traditions are bogus, but there is a basis for it) If it looks like a pig, grunts like a pig and tastes like a pig it's a pig. I have friends that grunt like a pig and live like a pig. But no thanks. Problem solved. Religious and cultural differences aside, Ahh, you have figured you have lost that argument then. OK. No, I put those arguments aside because those are absolute. You can not argue with someone telling them that they do not believe in their religious beliefs! I think having rats with a complete set of the human immune system running around in the sewer systems of the world is not a good idea either. Even humans don;t have a complete set of human immune systems. We are all different. Humans, as a specie, have immune systems different from the pig's. You are probably talking about alleles of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) -our immune system genes. Bubonic plage affects humans not fish. AIDS affect humans not fish or even chimps. Yes, yes there are some pathogens that affect ei. many mammals, we are different but we share some similitudes with our own species and with others. read the sowewhat related article below. Each organism has it's niche and broadening might not be a good idea. It might expose us to unknown pathogens. We are always being exposed to unknown pathogens. It's what pathogens do. pathogens interact with their hosts. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. * THE ENEMY WITHIN New Scientist 9 Aug 2000 Trapped among your own genes are those of ancient viral invaders that plagued our ancestors. Could these fossil viruses be to blame when our immune system turns traitor? Bryant Furlow investigates IT'S DARK. As you drift off to sleep, a noise outside yanks you back into the wakeful world. Instantly alert, your heart pounds against your ribs. A moment later you hear a snarling bark and a crash as the intruders beat a hasty retreat. Panic over-good old Fido has seen them off. But imagine that instead of settling back to sleep, your loyal watchdog comes bounding into your bedroom, teeth bared, eyes flashing, and starts attacking you. How do you feel as your flesh is ripped apart? Now you can begin to understand the shock felt by someone who has been told that their own immune system-their body's molecular watchdog-has turned traitor. Autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, claim millions of new victims each year. Their methods vary, but all involve an overzealous immune system attacking the very body it was designed to defend. Cell by cell, they slowly disable and ultimately kill many of their victims. Despite decades of research, few theories have emerged to explain why natural selection would tolerate such a critical design flaw. Now a few biologists are starting to point the finger at alien invaders that have been trapped inside our cells for millions of years. And if they are right, practices such as gene therapy and xenotransplantation may be riskier than anyone thought. Researchers agree that the key to the puzzle of autoimmunity must lie in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) -our immune system genes. The MHC is an unusually diverse region of the genome, which probably reflects our intense and ongoing co-evolutionary arms race with countless disease organisms. Each MHC gene in a population can have dozens of versions-or alleles-although only a couple of these will be present in any given individual. Over 200 MHC genes are packed tightly together in our genome and their job is to produce proteins that detect and destroy invaders. But some MHC alleles or haplotypescombinations of alleles-have a major drawback: people who carry them are more likely to get an autoimmune disease. For example, nearly every victim of Hirata's disease-in which the body attacks its insulin-producing cells-carries the MHC allele known as DR4wl3. Twothirds of those who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis possess another risky allele called DQBI. The haplotypes dubbed DQ and DR also confer an increased risk of rheumatoid arthritis and type I diabetes. And researchers have identified dozens more of these associations. But strangely, not everybody who carries a risky allele or haplotype becomes ill. So the simplistic notion that these risky alleles lead inexorably to autoimmune disease has been abandoned in favour of more sophisticated explanations. The widely accepted view is that a risky allele must be switched on before it turns traitor. The trigger is thought to be bits of foreign proteins, from food or infectious invaders, that resemble the body's own proteins. MHC alleles that respond to such "molecular mimics" will then be primed to attack the body's own proteins as well. Such alleles could persist through evolutionary time if they help fight off infectious diseases in early life and do not trigger autoimmune reactions until middle or late life. So people who carry them are more likely to survive long enough to reproduce and pass along their double-edged immunological inheritance. Although this theory doesn't explain susceptibility to diseases that kick in during childhood, such as type I diabetes, many find it appealing. Not so Graham Boyd, emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. He doesn't attribute autoimmune diseases to molecular mimics at all. Instead, Boyd and a growing number of like-minded theorists point to what at first glance may seem an unlikely culprit: ancient viruses stuck in the human genome, known as endogenous retroviruses or ERVS. Outlandish as it sounds, we are the genetic descendants of viruses as well as primates. The viral ancestors of ERVs invaded the cells of our forebears during infections millions of years ago and liked it so much they decided to stay. Happily integrated into their new home, ERVs have become part of our own genome, passed down through the generations. In fact, virologists have spotted ERVs in the genome of every mammal they have checked. Repeated invasions over more than 30 million years have left a surprisingly large viral legacy. "Up to 1 per cent of the human genome is represented by human ERVs and their fragments," says Eugene Sverdlov, a geneticist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. ERVs are relatively simple creatures, genetically speaking. Like wild retrovir-uses-which include HIV-they have a few genes codingfor enzymes and structural proteins. These are sandwiched between long terminal repeat sequences (LTRs), which act like on-off switches regulating the production of viral genes. They are called retroviruses because their genes are encoded in RNA rather than DNA and they infiltrate the host genome by creating DNA copies of themselves. Infected cells may then be tricked into duplicating the viral genes as though they were merely instructions for one of the body's own cellular proteins (see Diagram, p 40). Sverdlov calls ERVs "the perpetually mobile footprints of ancient infections". Many of the resident aliens' genes have been broken up by mutations, but at least:: a few are still intact and able to make viral proteins. ERVs also have a nasty habit of hopping around the genome, duplicating as they go. And either behaviour- jumping or producing viral proteins could explain why certain MHC alleles are linked to autoimmune disease. One way ERVs might trigger autoimmune disease is by causing regulatory problems in the MHC genes, suggests Klaus Badenhoop from the University of Frankfurt, Germany. Although nobody knows exactly why, ERVs appear to have a particular affinity for the MHC region. By some estimates, they are 10 times as common in the MHC as elsewhere in our genome. When an ERV's regulatory instructions (its LTR) land near a host regulatory sequence, the viral on-off switch can be mistaken for the host's own genetic gadgetry, with disastrous results. The ERV can enhance or modify the expression of adjacent genes, says Badenhoop. Together with Ralf Tvnjes from the Paul Ehrlich Institute in Langen, Germany, and others, Badenhoop is investigating whether risky MHC alleles might wreak their havoc because they mistake the ERV instructions for their own, and so are accidentally switched on. If this is so, you would expect to find more LTRs near risky alleles than normal MHC alleles. And this is exactly what Badenhoop and Christian Seidl of the University of Frankfurt discovered when they looked at the region around the haplotypes DQ and DR that confer a high risk of type I diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. Badenhoop sees promise in the idea that ERVs contribute to autoimmune disease by causing confusion within the immune system, but is reluctant to draw firm conclusions yet. "There is sufficient evidence to regard ERV long terminal repeats in the MHC as genetic markers for autoimmune disease," he says. But "their function-how and where they contribute to pathogenesis-still needs to be elucidated". Boyd also believes that ERVs could play a role in autoimmune disease. But instead of seeing people with autoimmune diseases as hapless victims, he prefers a more co-evolutionary explanation, which he has dubbed "balanced dynamic polymorphism". Boyd sees viruses and the hosts they live in as opposing teams in a dynamic co-evolutionary arms race. Like exotic species settling in new ecosystems-rats on an island, for example-ERVs can be disruptive when they first arrive. But like the rats' descendants, the viral lineages tend eventually to become better adapted to their surroundings. Once an ERV is integrated into another genome, its survival is hitched to that of its host. So the longer the association, the more likely it is that evolution will have quelled an ERV's more unneighbourly instincts. Boyd likens it to long-running tribal warfare. "As the years went by," he says, "there would be a sort of truce whereby the survivors from both sides would generally agree that all aggression should be curbed." This truce even goes so far as allowing ERVs to play a major role in our evolution, by doing away with the need to lay eggs (New Scientist, 12 June 1999, p 26). And recent studies reveal cases where viral genes have been co-opted by hosts to serve useful functions-ironically, often helping to fight disease. One such, called P-5, is involved in producing immune lymph cells. It has "a possible role in immunity to retrovirus infection", says Jerzy Kulski from the University of Westem Australia in Nedlands, who made the discovery with his colleague Roger Dawkins. Such domestication events may explain why Badenhoop's team found that while many risky genes are associated with viral LTRs, at least one such haplotype lacks them. In this case, the viral on-off switches are found near normal versions of a gene, suggesting that they may provide some protection against autoimmune disease. ERVs can also help defend hosts against wild viruses in other ways, according to Roswitha Lbwer, a geneticist from the Paul Ehrlich Institute in Langen, Germany. Chickens and mice are protected from infection by endogenous proteins that stop viruses sticking to host cells, Lbwer says. And in mice, ERVs interfere with the replication of wild viruses inside host cells. Normally, then, ERVs pose little threat to their hosts. But Boyd believes the truce is an uneasy one. "There would always be renegade rogues on both sides," he says. Although most ERVs do not normally produce the viral proteins that provoke attack from the host immune system, many retain the genetic code for such particles. This unwillingness to disarm, Boyd believes, may set the stage for autoimmune disease. ERVs that retain their protein-producing potential are more like tenuously tamed wolves than loyal puppy dogs. Every once in a while these ERVs awake from their civilised slumber and begin pumping out viral proteins. So what makes domesticated ERVs turn feral? Lower speculates that UV light and bacteria are possible alarm clocks that wake ERVS. Boyd believes that the key is repeated damage to cells, either from infection by wild viruses or from severe psychological stress. The effects of such stress can affect the sympathetic nerves controlling arterial blood supply. If the nerves are shut down, the temporary loss of blood supply can cause cellular damage, which might contribute to ERV activation, according to Boyd. Either way, once ERVs start producing molecules that look like antigens from wild viruses, MHC genes may kick in to fight off the perceived invasion. The result is an immune attack against your own cells. The question then is why natural selection hasn't eliminated those MHC alleles prone to mistake ERV products for infections. Boyd argues that hosts are in an evolutionary bind, a Darwinian catch-22. So long as wild relatives of ERVs exist in nature and pose a threat, there will be a survival advantage in possessing MHC alleles that can fight them off-even though individuals carrying such alleles are susceptible to autoimmune disease. His ideas fit in with today's knowledge of autoimmune susceptibility alleles and ERVs. He believes that the conflicting selection pressures for maintaining and eliminating risky MHC alleles-those that mistake ERV proteins for foreign invaders-result in some, but not all, individuals possessing dangerous alleles. If he is right, geneticists will find geographic pattems in the distribution of risky alleles that reflect varying disease risks. For the moment, the jury is still out on whether ERVs are an accessory to autoimmune disease. if they are, the implications for medicine are wide-ranging. Lower is particularly concemed about gene therapy and cross-species organ transplantation. The retroviruses used as vehicles in gene therapy might activate a patient's ERVSAnd the promise of plentiful supplies of organs from pigs and baboons for use in xenotransplantation may be dangerous for similar reasons. The ERVs in pigs and primates, Lbwer points out, are close relatives of ours. "There is a risk of uncontrolled human ERV amplifications," she says. Lbwer's concems seem well founded. Earlier this year, a team of her colleagues led by Frank Czauderna reported that some pig ERVs do indeed code for viable viruses. Worse still, the(se viruses can replicate in human tissues, at least under lab conditions. Czauderna worries that pig and human ERVs could hybridise, yielding infectious viruses with new and unfamiliar properties. But he is hopeful that it will be possible to use genetic engineering techniques to knock out pig ERVs and create a cloned lineage of donor animals for xenotransplantations. And there is a more positive side to all this: it could lead to ways of fighting off diseases that now seem to strike at random. If ERVs are activated by repeated stress, as Boyd suspects, then identifying and avoiding such stress could one day eliminate the immunological betrayals that lead to disease. "Autoimmune dis ease is not inevitable," says Boyd.1-1 |
#37
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Greed driving plant science
wrote in message ... I have friends that grunt like a pig and live like a pig. But no thanks. LOL........I think you should find new friends ;-) M |
#38
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Greed driving plant science
wrote in message ... Spain does not export oil to America. Today it's coasts are covered with oil. Who would have thought! I know about shuch things as continents but corn travels in ships. and how well does maize survive immersion in salt water? think a little -- Jim Webster "The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind" 'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami' |
#40
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Greed driving plant science
wrote in message ... A Fiat shares a lot of physical characteristics with a Lamborgini. You don't care, I say that there is some difference. Humans share lots of genes with the mouse. We share ~99% of the genes. However, religious and ethical believes of many people might tell them that is not the same to eat rat, pig, human or chicken. ethics are not necessarily rational, and often have no relationship to the real world. -- Jim Webster "The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind" 'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami' |
#41
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Greed driving plant science
Jim Webster wrote: wrote in message ... A Fiat shares a lot of physical characteristics with a Lamborgini. You don't care, I say that there is some difference. Humans share lots of genes with the mouse. We share ~99% of the genes. However, religious and ethical believes of many people might tell them that is not the same to eat rat, pig, human or chicken. ethics are not necessarily rational, and often have no relationship to the real world. In the real world people eat human meat? Enron, Global Crossing, et al are a rational way to make business? Child abuse by priests is the way to go in the real world? I think one thing is people not behaving ethically, another is to make unethical behavior the accepted norm. -- Jim Webster "The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind" 'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami' |
#42
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Greed driving plant science
Oz wrote: ... There you go. However pigs with human immune systems are under development for organ transplants. I would presume in the UK (as in the UK) this is tightly controlled. jajajaja. very funny! You did not learn anything from the mad cow diseas fiasco didn't you? |
#43
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Greed driving plant science
Jim Webster wrote: wrote in message ... Spain does not export oil to America. Today it's coasts are covered with oil. Who would have thought! I know about shuch things as continents but corn travels in ships. and how well does maize survive immersion in salt water? think a little The original point was that corn can travel over oceans with no problem, does so regularly. Pollen viability is a small problem compared to whole shipments of grain from USA to Africa or USA to SouthAmerica. (Mexican germplasm of maize has already been contaminated with GMO's, and it was not a cloud of pollen but a shipment of USA 'AID'. Other sources of germplasm contamination include regular exchanges between plant breeding programs around the world. Accidents happen. They happen regularly. GMO's containing pharmaceutical have been mixed with grain destined for human consumption. This was reported because of luck. Other accidents have probably not been reported. Other large scale experiments with humans like those of mad cow disease in England where denied for years until people started to suspect something wrong. Before people just died from an unknown disease. Some of you where arguing that the problem of GMO's are a question of doing good control and regulation. Well, tell that to the spaniards and their oiled coasts or tell that to the English and their mad cows, pigs and sheep. Some problems are much cheaper and easier to fix at the source, not down the line. That is a basic science and engineering principle. Now, go ahead take your own advise. Think a little. |
#44
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Greed driving plant science
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#45
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Greed driving plant science
Oz wrote: writes Oz wrote: ... There you go. However pigs with human immune systems are under development for organ transplants. I would presume in the UK (as in the UK) this is tightly controlled. jajajaja. very funny! You did not learn anything from the mad cow diseas fiasco didn't you? The world learned more from things like growth hormone and plasma transmissions of human CJD. It's inconceivable that this will not be checked for. However if you have a choice aged 70, of dying in six months or getting a pig heart transplant and dying in 30 years from a TE, I know which I would choose. I trust you would choose death in six months. If there is the strong posibility that the pig organ might carry viruses that are going to jump the species barrier and infect the human race, and in exchange I can get a few months of the worse quality of life, what do you think I can do for my kids? Don't forget, we all die. Learn to live with that! But I'll bet you wouldn;t. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
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