Cloned Burgers

In a few posts ago "Genetic Engineering of our Plants" I put up an article that outlined the prospect of losing the variety of genes found in wild plant species because of over breeding and genetic engineering. The idea was that by filtering out 'unwanted' traits in favor of more desirable ones, the genetic pool can get so concentrated with the same DNA that it becomes difficult to find plants that contain traits which are needed when something new happens.

Such as, oh I don't know - climate change? Plants and animals have been evolving on a planet that undergoes ice ages and major changes in climates. The species that have survived contain in them the ability to adapt to these changes so that wild animals will have young with a broad genetic possibilities, increasing the chances that they will have SOMETHING unique in them to help them survive the changes...

When humans muck up the system by breeding out the diversity, they are upping the chances that they will produce plants and animals that require a certain environment to survive. Sure, they may be SUPER plants and animals that will thrive in that environment - but what if it changes? And what happens when we have to go back to the drawing board and find wild animals and plants with diverse genes and they aren't there because we didn't let them survive.

The other problem of creating genetic mutated animals and plants is when they can't breed on their own, or if they do their offspring are mutations. The supply is then controlled not by the owners of said plants and animals who can build an independant business, but rather by the people who own the genetic map - and what happens then if they lose it or, worse, if someone decides they don't want to sell seeds this year, or if the farmer won't pay enough, or they play favorites and shut out free enterprise?

In the following article this process is being taken yet another step further - and again it's all being sold to farmers based on money... you can produce more product (they mean animals and plants) if you use genetically altered.

And of COURSE they say it won't hurt anyone to eat it - though they don't really know this... just like they didn't know that people would get sick and die from eating cows that were eating... cows. (Mad Cow Disease)

Having a large heard of identically tasting, big, meaty, easy to control animals who grow up faster and produce more milk sounds great - but if they are all clones, the diversity is completely gone. COMPLETELY.

If I was a conspiracy theorist I would say there is some underlying plan to do this so that someone can be in control of the food and thus control of the people. But I don't think people are that smart to plan ahead to take over - I think they are instead that stupid to pave the way for some evil oppertunist.

We should farm cloned animals says Dolly expert
By SEAN POULTER - More by this author
Dolly: Next it was pigs and cows


The creator of Dolly the sheep has called for farmers to take up cloning as a way of producing cheap food.

Professor Keith Campbell believes the country's farms should be populated by superstrong, super-sized offspring of clones.

The U.S. expects to be eating clone-farmed burgers, pork and bacon within two years, and supporters of the method say Europe must follow suit.

The Daily Mail revealed earlier this year how the daughter of a U.S. clone cow had been born on a British farm for the first time, making Frankenstein Farming a reality.

The intention is that the cow - Dundee Paradise - will be used to help breed Britain's future milking cow herds.

Professor Campbell said yesterday that this should be the first step to a far wider use of cloned animals to produce food from cattle, pigs, chicken and sheep.

Campaigners insist that meat and milk from cloned offspring is identical to the food in supermarkets and should not be labelled.

However, any attempt to deny families the right to decide whether they want to eat food produced in this way would be highly controversial.

One of the biggest concerns is the high number of clone-animal pregnancies that lead to abnormalities, miscarriages and stillbirths.

Even in the most successful cloning systems, twice as many piglets are born dead - around

20per cent - as with existing breeding. The clones could be created from cells taken from the ears of prized animals or even bodies going through a slaughterhouse.

Clone-offspring cows would be bigger and able to produce more milk than those from current breeding techniques.

Pigs might also be much bigger, leaner or faster growing, so making them easier and cheaper to produce.

Professor Campbell, director of animal bioscience at Nottingham University, said cloning is a useful extension of existing selective breeding, which includes artificial insemination and embryo transfer.

"It is just another technique that we can add to accelerate genetic improvements to farm animal species," he added. "Cloning allows us to multiply elite animals.

"We have achieved the ability to clone a whole variety of animals and animal species. In farm animals, we have got cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses.

"In my opinion the ability to integrate cloning into the food production line should be allowed to farmers nowadays."

He said there is 'no conceivable risk' in eating food produced from the off-spring of clones, suggesting the only barrier to the technology is public perception.

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration is expected to give approval for the technology, without a requirement for labelling, later this year.

Dr Simon Best, chairman of the Bioindustry Association, believes labelling is unnecessary saying: "I don't think there is a scientific reason for doing it."

He said: "There is a whole load of things that the public could want to know, but you end up with information overload.

The policy chief of the organic farming group, the Soil Association, dismissed the claims as 'propaganda'.

Peter Melchett said: "The fact that supporters of cloning are not prepared to support labelling and want to keep the whole thing secret says it all. It stinks."

The European Food Safety Authority launched an inquiry into the issue of clone farming following the Daily Mail revelations earlier this year.

But will take 18-24 months to report and there is no effectively system to police the introduction of clone farming.

Organicaly grown spaceships...

I've decided to sadly and disapointingly take the summer off, yet again. The kids go to bed at 8:30 for the younger and 10 for the older, and I can't start writing until too late. It's just too hard to find time to write and it hurts too badly to get to the end of the day and/or week and be too tired to even think straight. I'm still doing research though, and taking notes for ideas I'm having to refine the characters and plot.

On to the article....

In some Sci-fi stories aliens have devised ways to grow space ships - I've seen it on Star Trek and I believe the Taelon ships on Earth Final Conflict were also 'grown'... I know some of the other technology they had was.

According to the article below, genetic engineers are already taking the pieces of different puzzles and putting them together to make a new picture: such as glow in the dark pigs and super meaty cows or combining different types of fruit for new flavors or better resistance to pests and diseases. But now they are on the path to create their own puzzle pieces... the results of which are such extremes as to have an acorn that grows into a house. Synthetic fuel is also mentioned. How cool!

This biological technology is somewhat already incorporated into my novel in that characters are able to grow new arms or the arms/legs/skin/hair/feathers of other creatures should they desire for either cosmetic or utilitarian purposes. I had put in the surgical ability to transplant bionic technology if something inorganic was desired. However, this really opens my mind to other possibilities. Growing a bone and flesh version of an extravigant tool or weapon, for instance. Or growing trees and plants to serve as custome made shelters for the chimera and hybrids living in the kennels... or transportation devices like a sub for underwater traveling.

Of course there is the very exciting plot possibility of genetic mutations that are other than the scientists devised... ;)

>Genetic Engineers Who Don’t Just Tinker

FORGET genetic engineering. The new idea is synthetic biology, an effort by engineers to rewire the genetic circuitry of living organisms.

The ambitious undertaking includes genetic engineering, the now routine insertion of one or two genes into a bacterium or crop plant. But synthetic biologists aim to rearrange genes on a much wider scale, that of a genome, or an organism’s entire genetic code. Their plans include microbes modified to generate cheap petroleum out of plant waste, and, further down the line, designing whole organisms from scratch.

Synthetic biologists can identify a network of useful genes on their computer screens by downloading the gene sequences filed in DNA data banks. But a DNA molecule containing these various genes and their control elements would be a chain of hundreds of thousands of DNA units in length. Though human cells effortlessly duplicate a genome of three billion units, the longest piece of DNA synthesized so far is just 35,000 units long.

Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., hope to take a giant stride in synthetic biology by creating a piece of DNA 580,076 units in length from simple chemicals, chiefly the material that constitutes DNA’s four-letter chemical alphabet. This molecule would be an exact copy of the genome of a small bacterium. Dr. Venter says he then plans to insert it into a bacterial cell. If this man-made genome can take over the cell’s functions, Dr. Venter should be able to claim he has made the first synthetic cell.

Such an achievement could suggest some new plateau has been reached in human control of life and evolution. But Dr. Venter’s synthetic genome will probably be seen to represent a feat of copying evolution’s genetic programming, not of creating new life itself.

Synthetic biologists, as they survey all the new genes and control elements whose DNA sequences are now accumulating in data bases, seem to feel extraordinary power is almost within their grasp.

“Biology will never be the same,” Thomas F. Knight of M.I.T.’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory wrote recently in describing the new engineering discipline he sees as emerging from it.

Adherents of the new discipline held their third annual conference last month in Zurich but their creations are still at the toy rocket stage. A dish of bacteria that generates a bull’s eye pattern in response to the chemicals in its environment. A network of genes that synthesizes the precursor chemical to artemisin, an anti-malaria drug. “The understanding of networks and pathways is really in its infancy and will be a challenge for decades,” says James J. Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University.

That hasn’t stopped synthetic biologists from dreaming. “Grow a house” is on the to-do list of the M.I.T. Synthetic Biology Working Group, presumably meaning that an acorn might be reprogrammed to generate walls, oak floors and a roof instead of the usual trunk and branches. “Take over Mars. And then Venus. And then Earth” —the last items on this modest agenda.

Most people in synthetic biology are engineers who have invaded genetics. They have brought with them a vocabulary derived from circuit design and software development that they seek to impose on the softer substance of biology. They talk of modules — meaning networks of genes assembled to perform some standard function — and of “booting up” a cell with new DNA-based instructions, much the way someone gets a computer going.

The first practical applications of synthetic biology may not be so far off. “The real killer app for this field has become bioenergy,” Dr. Collins says. Under the stimulus of high gas prices, synthetic biologists are re-engineering microbes to generate the components of natural gas and petroleum. Whether this can be done economically remains to be seen. But one company, LS9 of San Carlos, Calif., says it is close to that goal. Its re-engineered microbe “produces hydrocarbons that look, smell and function” very similarly to those in petroleum, said Stephen del Cardayre, the company’s vice president for research.

Synthetic biologists are well aware that, like any new technology, theirs can be used for good or ill, and they have encouraged open discussion of possible risks at their annual meetings.

One possible danger is bioterrorism. According to a report in Science, Blue Heron Biotechnology, a DNA synthesis company, has already received requests, which it rejected, for DNA sequences encoding a plant toxin and part of the smallpox virus. Synthetic biologists hope that self-regulation will head off government supervision that could be expected to come in a field that has such potential for mischief.

Evolution continually refines its creations by means of the naturally occurring mutations in DNA that are the raw material of natural selection. This propensity to innovate may not be so welcome to synthetic biologists, who seek stable systems. But they hope to spot mutations with error-detection algorithms and then go back to the original cells. “You can think of it as a re-boot,” said Ron Weiss, a synthetic biologist at Princeton.

Even if the mutation problem can be squelched, it remains to be seen how far synthetic biologists can wrest evolution’s strange system to entirely different purposes and whether the human organism is one they will propose to debug and upgrade.