Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

sciencedaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 173 posts

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#41

Post by jcomis »

deepGem wrote: post #33
devchix wrote: post #28

Perhaps there's a net good application to this, more yield so a plant can produce more, feed more hungry people, survive storage and shipping -- but I see 4lbs packs of Driscoll strawberries at my store, year round. The fruits are gigantic, way bigger than what a strawberry should be, firm, uniformly red, and absolutely tasteless. Same with tomatoes, bananas, potatoes, anything you could buy at a typical grocery stor…

When I first moved from India to US, this is the first noticeable difference I found. Huge ass veggies, devoid of taste. I just couldn't believe tomatoes. They looked so pretty yet had literally no tart. So yeah I'm cool with all of these RNA fiddling etc but for the love of God, do not turn vegetables into tasteless elements that just look pretty in super market shelves. My real shocker was onion. I mean, man I coul…

> So those in US, if at all you ever feel like eating real vegetables hop on a 15 hour flight to Delhi or Bangalore :)

Or check out your local farmers marker or CSA

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#42

Post by lugged »

necovek wrote: post #21

While I see people worry about the nutrient content in the resulting food, I wonder more about the nutrient content of the soil after a few years of such products. While we fertilize the soil, the mention of "longer and deeper roots" means that such plants will take out more from the ground, making ground less usable for future farming. Basically, as others have said, there is an evolutionary reason plants do not nat…

No dig market gardens and jadam techniques are spreading. I'm not really that worried about stuff like this.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#43

Post by hirundo »

favoritecolor wrote: post #25

Original paper linked here (behind paywall) [0]. The researchers introduced the human FTO gene into plants to increase crop yields. Would this be cannibalism? You could use RNA demethylases from other organisms for sure, but it's a really interesting and weird concept, whether people would consider eating a plant expressing human proteins to be taboo. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-021-00982-9

We share the majority of our genes with other animals and plants. If sharing a gene with humans makes eating it cannibalism it becomes cannibalism to eat almost any living thing.

https://www.saps.org.uk/saps-associates/browse-q-and-a/473-h...

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#44

Post by wombat-man »

necovek wrote: post #21

While I see people worry about the nutrient content in the resulting food, I wonder more about the nutrient content of the soil after a few years of such products. While we fertilize the soil, the mention of "longer and deeper roots" means that such plants will take out more from the ground, making ground less usable for future farming. Basically, as others have said, there is an evolutionary reason plants do not nat…

well, if we're growing more consumable biomass per acre or whatever, we can do something else with land we would have otherwise dedicated to producing the same amount of potatoes.

Not an expert, but read the Omnivore's dilemma which kinda runs through how modern farming works on a high level. Basically you figure out what the chemical building blocks are for what you're trying to grow, and fertilize the soil with that. The plant then pulls that out to actually construct the corn or whatever it is you're trying to grow.

Of course it might not be as delicious and nutritious as what you might be able to grow at home or at a well managed organic farm, but the goal is quantity here.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#45

Post by lugged »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #27
necovek wrote: post #21

While I see people worry about the nutrient content in the resulting food, I wonder more about the nutrient content of the soil after a few years of such products. While we fertilize the soil, the mention of "longer and deeper roots" means that such plants will take out more from the ground, making ground less usable for future farming. Basically, as others have said, there is an evolutionary reason plants do not nat…

> Basically, as others have said, there is an evolutionary reason plants do not naturally grow this big (they'd kill themselves off in a few generations). I don't know that this is solid reasoning. Certainly there is some limit eventually imposed by soil nutrient content but there could also be other reasons plants don't grow large fruit. A big one being that plants which grow their fruit to spread seeds reach effici…

I really wonder sometimes how much is human selection on purpose and how much is human selection by simply finding the bigger crops easier to forage.

Guessing it's a bit of both.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#46

Post by wiz21c »

ch4s3 wrote: post #8
tobmlt wrote: post #6

How about nutrient content by mass, or some such measure? I skimmed the article, maybe I missed it. Aside: How easy is it to break into computational biology as a, say, practitioner of computational mechanics?

It's probably about the same, it seems like the change is producing larger more robust plants which yield more. It doesn't seem like that should either the size of the rice grain itself or the nutrient content.

larger plants means less plants per square meter, no ?

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#47

Post by thret »

grey-area wrote: post #35
necovek wrote: post #21

While I see people worry about the nutrient content in the resulting food, I wonder more about the nutrient content of the soil after a few years of such products. While we fertilize the soil, the mention of "longer and deeper roots" means that such plants will take out more from the ground, making ground less usable for future farming. Basically, as others have said, there is an evolutionary reason plants do not nat…

No cultivated species is the result of natural selection, they have been selected for centuries, sometimes millennia, by humans for the things we value. For the most extreme example see seedless grapes.

Peas famously have been cultivated from a single mutation that does not burst when ripe. They can't reproduce without human intervention.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#49

Post by searine »

tobmlt wrote: post #6

How about nutrient content by mass, or some such measure? I skimmed the article, maybe I missed it. Aside: How easy is it to break into computational biology as a, say, practitioner of computational mechanics?

>How easy is it to break into computational biology as a, say, practitioner of computational mechanics?

There are niches you can get into that are more computer/IT focused where you can start. Things like HPC management, software coding/upkeep for existing tools.

These jobs would like pay a lot less than corporate gig. To get into a true analyst role you'd need a few years of biology training. To start asking your own questions professionally you'd need several years of biology training.

Nothing stopping you from starting it as a hobby though!

Post reply on HN