Scientists Crack DNA Code of Rice

[sintax]

My Comment: Have they cracked the DNA of the milieu in which the rice is grown? The myth of Gene Theory continues. Should be good for more research which will, of course, require more funding.

Scientists Crack DNA Code of Rice

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer

Wednesday, August 10, 2005
 

(08-10) 10:03 PDT NEW YORK, (AP) --

An international team of scientists has deciphered the genetic code of rice, an advance that should speed improvements in a crop that feeds more than half the world's population.

It's the first crop plant to have its genome sequenced, which means scientists identified virtually all the 389 million chemical building blocks of its DNA. Certain sequences of these building blocks form genes, like letters spelling words.

The advance will help breeders produce new rice varieties with traits such as higher yield, improved nutritional content and better resistance to disease and pests, said one of the project's leaders, W. Richard McCombie of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

"I would think this is going to help people find genes and probably enhance the crop in well under 10 years," McCombie said.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/08/10/national/a100358D16.DTL

[Sabriel]

1. I'll be the first to say...

I thought they were trying to figure out if Condoleeza Rice is....

[iconoclastic cat]

4. Well, it's a safe bet that she's Reptillian.

[peacetalksforall]

12. It's difficult to place an animal or retillian tag on her because as far

as we know, none of these species lie.

[kenny blankenship]

2. She's part lizard, right?

[m_welby]

3. Condi has DNA?!!

I thought she was an android.

Sorry, couldn't help myself

[delen]

17. Ever noticed

A strange resemblance between Condi and Michelle Malkin?
I have no idea of their respective ages, just sayin' is all.

[VegasWolf]

5. Misread at first, thought that they had identified the genome responsible

for sycophancy.

[ibegurpard]

6. This Rice?

Did they find any

or


in there?

[Generator]

22. Damn you people!!!!

You beat me to the Rice-Reptillian references. I live for this stuff, you know.

[Terran]

7. I consider myself a technologist, but...

somehow I don't think it's a good idea to be tampering with the genes of a plant that feeds half the planet. Genetically engineered foods haven't been the huge success they were touted to be., so far.

[Mairead]

8. I was just thinking: first they eff up corn, and now they're in a position

to do the same to rice. The two major food crops of the world.

[Terran]

10. Right

And gene-modded corn has alredy found its way into the human food outlets, which it wasn't supposed to do. This could someday have a profound impact.

And of course, the way Monsanto is going, they'll be patenting rice any day now and making Chinese peasants pay them for it.

[tabasco]

9. What species is she?

Oh! THAT rice.

[Chef]

11. Rice Cakes

But, what about protecting the unborn rice cakes?

[meganmonkey]

13. Remember 'Golden Rice'?

Several years ago, biotech unleashed a new, genetically modified version of rice that was supposed to help solve Vitamin A deficiency around the world. It was sort of the poster child for genetic modification, the standard answer to those who questioned the idea of GMO - oh we can feed the world! We can end malnutrution!

Turns out, despite all the plans and testing, you would have to eat something like 16 pounds of the rice a day to get the right amount of Vitamin A.

Bye bye Golden Rice. :eyes:

Can't wait to see what's next :scared:

edit to add link: http://www.foe.org/safefood/rice.html

[Canuckistanian]

14. Monsanto's drooling right now

And they're getting out their checkbook...

[sintax]

15. It's all about keeping the research funding pipeline going

and of course the hopes of controlling the worlds food supply and having everyone be a serf for Monsanto.
Even within the rules of its own game Biotech crops are a failure. In the real world the techno-dreams are a disaster.

[Lexingtonian]

16. I'm a little puzzled by your comment...

Have they cracked the DNA of the milieu in which the rice is grown? The myth of Gene Theory continues.

This bit puzzles me. I'm not sure I can quite answer what you are trying to ask, or tell, us but I'll be happy to try. The title of the article contains a poor choice of ideas and metaphors in summarizing its contents, that is quite true.

Should be good for more research which will, of course, require more funding.

Well, as something of a biologist (on the animal/biomedical side of the field) I don't know how to assign further research a monetary value. But surely, of the many ways American and other governments spend money, this delivers something of permanent value and is definitive knowledge. Buying more tanks or occupying Third World countries, and most other uses of government money, leaves us almost nothing tangible, by comparison, over generations and centuries, even if it has its own variety of importance. Who remembers the American war waged against Tripoli?

How well people use this advance as knowledge in the short term is hard to tell, but it leads to further development of rice as a better food crop in the long term rather inevitably.

[sintax]

26. Civilization and soil

It's not the rice that is the problem it is industrial agriculture and monocropping and etc.... that have created such agricultural dystopia.

from another point of view, like the real world, all Biotech activity is extremely energy intensive and polluting. We must relearn small scale organic practices which also outproduce all Agribusiness.

For more info read latest study by David Pimentel and Tad Patzek.

Wrong questions- Wrong Answers as always from the gene splicers and gene giants. Maybe the western reductionist should go ask the masters like Masanobu Fukuoka or the Cambodians how to grow rice in a very low tech non-toxic manner that even has higher yields than the so-called mythologized, lied about and poisonous Green Revolution.

GMO's offer NOTHING absolutely zero to the world but a toxic legacy and corporate profits.

These "problems" with the rice are manufactured PR manipulations.

[dubyaD40web]

18. Still no cure for cancer...

[toska]

19. So how long until ...

... we get low carb rice?

[TahitiNut]

20. The world of Copyrighted Food -- pay royalties to eat.

:shrug:

[Don Claybrook]

23. And don't forget...

Some of this stuff will inevitably mix with other, non-genetic rice. Then we'll have Monsanto suing the farmers whose fields it blew into. And, by the way, I'm sure the rice will be genetically-blocked from reproducing annually, like it's done for millions of years (or 6000 years, for the superstitiously challenged).

[Earth_First]

21. Pure evil?

I'm certain that was the result.

[loudsue]

24. Monsanto's danger to this world is growing every day.

Of all the corporate monsters, these guys take the cake. They aren't out there trying to help ANYBODY have healthier crops; they're strictly looking for a way to make a HUGE profit, by locking up the market on the world's food.

Why in the hell else would a company create crops that ONLY THEY HAVE SEEDS TO PRODUCE? Crops that will breed with other nearby crops to create seeds that won't reproduce? They are so frikkin' OBVIOUS in their greed and evil intentions.

It just makes me shudder.

:kick::kick::kick:

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. Good to see everyone assumes this is some evil for-profit scheme

as opposed to actually finding out about it, by clicking a couple of links:

The International Rice Genome Sequencing Project (IRGSP), a consortium of publicly funded laboratories, was established in 1997 to obtain a high quality, map-based sequence of the rice genome using the cultivar Nipponbare of Oryza sativa ssp. japonica. It is currently comprised of ten members: Japan, the United States of America, China, Taiwan, Korea, India, Thailand, France, Brazil, and the United Kingdom.

http://rgp.dna.affrc.go.jp/IRGSP/

Jeez, some of the people here give Luddites a bad name. Hey, let's stick our heads in the sand and never bother to do any research on our food - I'm sure we'll muddle along some how. :sarcasm: