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The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

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Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#51

Post by rulalala »

waldothedog wrote: post #26
rulalala wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean surely populations would exist, bit the spatial and cultural significance of the species is gone. And, for how long do we want to believe that environmental change (including fungus) can be frozen in a specific time moment that should be preserved?

Isn’t all the writing about the American chestnut indicative of some on-going cultural significance? Wasn’t the blight and panic that wiped them out largely a result of human activity? I think this is one environmental change that happened VERY fast, in which we see our own hand, and that we believe we might still be able to turn back. But I sense that you see some down side which I don’t see?

I sympathise with the struggle of losing a major specie, and of course the cultural significance is great and will never fully vanish.

One thing is to protect nature, another to reject somehow inevitable change happening all the time.

A legitimate concern could emerge on discussing whether there is no better plan, because IMHO this plan offered false hopes, and perhaps many such restoration plans provide more hopes than quantitative performance indicators.

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#52

Post by rulalala »

Georgelemental wrote: post #27
rulalala wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean surely populations would exist, bit the spatial and cultural significance of the species is gone. And, for how long do we want to believe that environmental change (including fungus) can be frozen in a specific time moment that should be preserved?

> the spatial and cultural significance of the species is gone. If it's ecologically competitive, it will spread again in the fullness of time, no?

Yain, meaning yes and no, because of shifting baselines and other co-occurring dynamics, perhaps there are other natural and man-made uses already taking place?

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#53

Post by jes5199 »

alexvoda wrote: post #37
jes5199 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the original vaccine was a live virus, and the only way to grow more of it was to infect people and then harvest it from the pox on their bodies. So many generations of this vaccine virus were passed around this way. For decades everyone believed it was cowpox, another common virus, but after a while scientists noticed it wasn’t actually cowpox - and modern generic studies show that it doesn’t match any known virus

All of what you said goes against common knowledge of the history of the vaccine. You will have to provide solid sources for your claims in order to not appear as a conspiracy theory peddler. What you mentioned in the first paragraph is not vaccination, it is called variolation. It predates vaccination by a large margin and was far more dangerous.

wikipedia: “From 1796 to the 1880s, the vaccine was transmitted from one person to another through arm-to-arm vaccination.”

(Variolation used real smallpox, arm-to-arm used the vaccine virus instead) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine#Types

“As medical researchers subjected viruses to serial passage, inadequate recordkeeping resulted in the creation of laboratory strains with unclear origins.[95]: 4 By the late 19th century, it was unknown whether the vaccine originated from cowpox, horsepox, or an attenuated strain of smallpox.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine#Origin

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#54

Post by jes5199 »

boxed wrote: post #40
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a conspiracy theory peddler. What conspiracy? It’s a theory of lost knowledge / confusion, but no one is conspiring with anyone.

He asked for a citation. Please provide one.

I commented with links to wikipedia’s relevant sections

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#55

Post by jes5199 »

moomin wrote: post #46
boxed wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He asked for a citation. Please provide one.

Okay, I just jumped down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what OP might mean. I think they’ve got it sideways. I think they’re talking about vaccinia, a virus related to cowpox (and smallpox) that form the basis of modern smallpox vaccines. The origin of the virus is, entertainingly, lost to time due to poor record keeping. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinia There’s also “kinepox”, but I _think_ that’s just a…

I’m not sure what’s sideways, how is this different from what I said?

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#56

Post by moomin »

jes5199 wrote: post #55
moomin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I just jumped down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what OP might mean. I think they’ve got it sideways. I think they’re talking about vaccinia, a virus related to cowpox (and smallpox) that form the basis of modern smallpox vaccines. The origin of the virus is, entertainingly, lost to time due to poor record keeping. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinia There’s also “kinepox”, but I _think_ that’s just a…

I’m not sure what’s sideways, how is this different from what I said?

Actually, you’re right. With the links it’s clear.

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#57

Post by worik »

bluGill wrote: post #50
worik wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how is GMO different from normal breeding where we hane no clue what mutations happen The answer is in your question. We have no clue. What we do not know about how living organisms recreate themselves is much more, and more important (IMO) than what we do know. We know that DNA plays an important role. We also know that DNA is not the whole story. We know very little about how DNA plays it role. We terribly confus…

> In normal breeding we do not have to be concerned about what we do not know, when we start changing DNA it becomes very important Normal breeding we are also changing DNA - it is just random uncontrolled mutation.

> Normal breeding we are also changing DNA - it is just random uncontrolled mutation.

That is not paying attention to what I said

> it is just random uncontrolled mutation.

We do not know how genetic changes (evolution) happens, we know it is much more than that

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#58

Post by interroboink »

bluGill wrote: post #48
interroboink wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to tap the brakes for anyone wanting to take your analogy too far: a lot of objections about GMO in general are about the accelerated rate at which the changes can be made, relative to traditional methods (such as breeding). The worry is that we might be introducing altered genomes at a rate faster than we can observe and understand the downstream impacts. So in those arguments (which are the majority, in GMO de…

> the accelerated rate at which the changes can be made, relative to traditional methods Citation needed there. I know the claim is common, but GMO is inserting one known mutation. How many mutations are there from parent to children is not something I can find a citation for, but since most mutations do nothing (or kill the child) there must be a lot of mutations involved in traditional breeding not one which means…

I suppose there's a distinction to be made between quantity and quality of changes, too. Certainly regular sex mixes things up a lot every time, but only within the bounds of the established gene pool (roughly).

Compare this to, say, the famous example of adding firefly genes to tobacco plants, to make them bioluminescent. That's a small change in terms of number of genes, but very "sudden" in terms of how far it is away from the norm — it would have taken a very long time for that to have happened as a result of natural (or even breeding-style) permutations of existing genes. So it's a "big" change in that sense, even if "small" in the other.

As far as citations go, I think the Wikipedia page on GMO foods is decent? [1]

For instance, the "Gene flow" section describes the risk of various unexpected consequences of GMO crops affecting their surroundings: "There are concerns that the spread of genes from modified organisms to unmodified relatives could produce species of weeds resistant to herbicides[303] that could contaminate nearby non-genetically modified crops, or could disrupt the ecosystem,[304][305] "

Of course in general, GMO crops are seen as safe (with lots of of "more long term research is needed" caveats), but the page has various links to concerns and ongoing research along the lines we're been discussing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food_cont...

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#59

Post by [deleted] »

interroboink wrote: post #30
causality0 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason, when you take a process that has traditionally been done with a baseball bat and start doing it with a knife, suddenly everyone comes out of the woodwork to talk about how your knife is too dull and it should either be done with a scalpel or not at all.

Just to tap the brakes for anyone wanting to take your analogy too far: a lot of objections about GMO in general are about the accelerated rate at which the changes can be made, relative to traditional methods (such as breeding). The worry is that we might be introducing altered genomes at a rate faster than we can observe and understand the downstream impacts. So in those arguments (which are the majority, in GMO de…

[deleted]

Re: The problem with the Darling 58 genetically modified chestnut tree

#60

Post by yeetusus »

AlexandrB wrote: post #31
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We routinely plant over a billion trees each year in the USA. Tree planting is a huge industry. We have tractor attachments that can mass plant some species.

I had a friend who planted trees for a summer job. He said it was good money for a summer job and they got paid something like $0.20/tree.

I saw that on tiktok myself. But apparently only the experts at tree planting make good money and it takes a few seasons to get good.
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