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Atomic Gardening

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Re: Atomic Gardening

#11

Post by favoritecolor »

This is a pretty brute force method for genetic engineering -- and yet it works! It's essentially just pressing fast forward on evolution.

But this is wildly inefficient. Plant genomes are often ridiculously large (e.g., the onion genome is 4X the size of the human genome), so you either have to throw a bunch of mutagen on the plant (which can cause off-target, toxic mutations) and/or plant a bunch of seedlings to get the plant you're looking for.

New methods often include introducing new genes with mutations through agrobacteria, gold nanoparticle bombardment, etc. without needing to actually mutagenize a plant genome. Do your mutagenesis on a specific gene in bacteria, and then test those random genetic variants in plants.

But for me, what is more exciting is a relatively new shift toward targeted mutagenesis directly in plants. For example, CRISPR can be used to target mutations to specific genes in situ (and not insertions or deletions -- useful point mutations through the use of base editors) [0]. I think the directed evolution of plants will be a pretty fruitful (lol) area of research in the future, and I'm excited to see where that field goes. Gotta love new plants!

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41580-020-00288-9 -- see section "Mutagenesis and directed evolution"

Re: Atomic Gardening

#12

Post by briefcomment »

SigmundA wrote: post #9

It always amuses me to find that people are against GMO foods yet almost everything we eat is GMO depending on how you define it. Almost every crop and livestock has been genetically modified through selective breeding (domestication). Mutagenesis, which atomic gardening falls under, has been around since the 1920's using x-rays and chemicals and currently doesn't normally fall under most GMO definitions because its…

I'm guessing it's more about transparency. Monsanto using a proprietary genome for the sake of increasing yield at scale seems fundamentally different than a local farmer who selectively breeds to maintain some heirloom crop. I think the former is much more of a black box and has more potential for something unexpected to occur than the latter.

Re: Atomic Gardening

#15

Post by mumblemumble »

I'm immediately curious what percentage of non-GMO certified produce are cultivars that were produced this way. This approach strikes me as being much more likely to accidentally produce unexpectedly harmful effects than modern gene recombination.

Re: Atomic Gardening

#16

Post by bostonsre »

mumblemumble wrote: post #15

I'm immediately curious what percentage of non-GMO certified produce are cultivars that were produced this way. This approach strikes me as being much more likely to accidentally produce unexpectedly harmful effects than modern gene recombination.

Why do you think it would be more prone to do that compared with newer approaches?

Re: Atomic Gardening

#17

Post by bostonsre »

briefcomment wrote: post #12
SigmundA wrote: post #9

It always amuses me to find that people are against GMO foods yet almost everything we eat is GMO depending on how you define it. Almost every crop and livestock has been genetically modified through selective breeding (domestication). Mutagenesis, which atomic gardening falls under, has been around since the 1920's using x-rays and chemicals and currently doesn't normally fall under most GMO definitions because its…

I'm guessing it's more about transparency. Monsanto using a proprietary genome for the sake of increasing yield at scale seems fundamentally different than a local farmer who selectively breeds to maintain some heirloom crop. I think the former is much more of a black box and has more potential for something unexpected to occur than the latter.

Would both of your examples be labeled as gmo?

Re: Atomic Gardening

#18

Post by forgotmypw17 »

SigmundA wrote: post #9

It always amuses me to find that people are against GMO foods yet almost everything we eat is GMO depending on how you define it. Almost every crop and livestock has been genetically modified through selective breeding (domestication). Mutagenesis, which atomic gardening falls under, has been around since the 1920's using x-rays and chemicals and currently doesn't normally fall under most GMO definitions because its…

GMO in the sense most people mean it (direct genetic modification) almost always also means pesticides.

I think that

Re: Atomic Gardening

#19

Post by mumblemumble »

bostonsre wrote: post #16
mumblemumble wrote: post #15

I'm immediately curious what percentage of non-GMO certified produce are cultivars that were produced this way. This approach strikes me as being much more likely to accidentally produce unexpectedly harmful effects than modern gene recombination.

Why do you think it would be more prone to do that compared with newer approaches?

With gene recombination, you're inserting specific, known genes into the organism's DNA. The possible range of consequences of that modification is at least reasonably predictable.

With atomic gardening, you're changing the genetic code at random, and I would guess that you really have no decent way of knowing exactly what's changed and what effects it might have. So you're only going to notice things that are really obvious, or that you specifically looked for. And you can't just do a dragnet search for every possible effect, because that would get you sent to the 4th circle of scientific hell. [1]

Personally I'm not worried about whether Rio Star grapefruit is safe to eat. (About as safe as any food can be, that is. This morning I stumbled across something about french press coffee being bad for cholesterol levels, and can't help but think that, if you look hard enough, you can probably find some way in which every food is killing you. Which isn't to say that nothing matters, but one of the things that does matter is effect size. But I digress.) It's been around for a long time and people have been eating it with no apparent ill effects. But I'm pretty sure I'm not using the same risk calculus as folks who belong to the non-GMO certification program's target market.

[1]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691612459519

Re: Atomic Gardening

#20

Post by mlavin »

bostonsre wrote: post #17
briefcomment wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing it's more about transparency. Monsanto using a proprietary genome for the sake of increasing yield at scale seems fundamentally different than a local farmer who selectively breeds to maintain some heirloom crop. I think the former is much more of a black box and has more potential for something unexpected to occur than the latter.

Would both of your examples be labeled as gmo?

GMO implies a lab process with specific alteration of genes, while traditional plant breeding to traits only exposes phenotypes as indication of results, and relies on the pre-existing variance in species to provide new traits.
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