On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 10:37:40PM -0500, David VanHorn wrote:
> >
> >
> > Yes, there is a chance that GM could cause some major problems. However,
> > nature has been doing GM for, well, ever since there was nature.
> 
> 
> True, but we are taking sequences from phyla that would never interact in
> nature, and splicing them.. Few corn plants ever cross-polinate with a
> squid. :)

You know, we used to think that's true, turns out it's not. Bacteria do
massive amounts of gene splicing all by themselves. It's one of the
reasons testing if food has been genetically modified is so difficult,
if you look for "genes out of place" you get false positives from when
bacteria cut and paste genes from one organism to another. It's not like
it happens all the time, but in a huge field of corn... One in a billion
chances add up real quick.

It's part of the reason standard breeding techniques have produced such
an incredible variety of plants.

-- 
pete@petertodd.ca http://www.petertodd.ca
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