Simpsons Fan Creates Real Tomacco Plant

An anonymous reader writes "So, according to a KPTV newscast, a Simpsons fan with too much time on his hands grafted a tobacco plant and a tomato plant and, ta-da: tomacco! Leaves and most likely the fruit (yes, tomato is a fruit technically) contain nicotine. Delicious AND deadly!" Simpsonschannel.com has a small news piece on the breakthrough, but in a Frink-like move, although scientists have found "nicotine in the leaves", it turns out "the lab hasn't tested if the actual tomato has nicotine in it yet, but they say it probably does."

McDonald's

From the article [simpsonschannel.com]: "The plant grew off the tobacco roots and sucked up the nicotine, just like Tomacco on The Simpsons.

What do you bet that McDonald's will start using these tomatoes to make us all addicted to their salads and burgers? :P

Re:McDonald's

"Daddy, this burger tastes like grandma!"

Re:McDonald's

Soylent McGreen is ... PEOPLE!!!

Re:McDonald's

Now really, would it be that -bad- if most of America were addicted to salads? :)

Re:McDonald's

It isn't the nicotine that causes cancer (IIRC) in cigarettes, it's the tar in the lungs, to the greatest degree. Lip cancer (from chew) is predominantly caused by the other things in the chew (such as draino-type chemicals and fiberglass) that agitate the skin over a long period of time.

obligatory

"This tates like grandma!" Love that episode.

Shall we end it all right now?

The Ralph Wiggum File [snpp.com]

btw, you're wrong.

Simpsons science is always a reality

I mean, just look at Skittlebrau!! [slashdot.org]

Retraction

I do find it interesting that the linked site has a retraction of the "Fox News is going to sue us" story. Perhaps a slashback is in order?

Re:Retraction

Nothing is provable without a URL.

Ah, that proves nothing.

+1 Funny

The odds of a mutation creating all parts simultaneously are astronomical, and consequently, the only accepted theory that can sanely describe such a thing is intelligent design

Intelligent Design [csicop.org] is an "accepted" theory?! I think you've been smoking too many tomacco leaves...

Re:+1 Funny

Alas, you proceed to destroy your credibility with an ad hominem attack:

There's nothing wrong about an "ad hominem" claim if it is both true and topical- it's actually a valid (though rare) part of formal philosophical debate. In this case, his statement is sufficiently true: creationists are religionists, who believe their position was Divinely affirmed.

An "atheist creationist" is not a contradition in terms; somebody could decide that life evolved by natural selection on some distant planet, from which bioengineers came to Earth in flying saucers. But you don't find people with those beliefs, because (virtually) all creationists are starting from a religious perspective, and then trying to squeeze science to fit the viewpoint they've already decided on.

Re:+1 Funny

This was what triggered the comment, although I admit it was poorly executed due to timing. Science is the application of a critical eye to everything, including the currently held concepts. But more than that, it proves its worth by providing predictions, and then having those predictions proven or disproved. Neither is worse than the other: a disproved theory is still progress in science.

If you are watching The Elegant Universe on PBS, you will see that the primary argument against the string theorists is that they theories they propose contain no testable (in the reasonable future) concepts. What made Einstein so amazing was he came up with the consequences for the rules of gravity and light virtually out of whole cloth in his head. But his theory made predictions: if they had proved wrong, he would be barely a footnote.

Creationists refuse to submit to the rigors of prediction and testing. If evolution predicts there should be an animal of characteristic X in the record, finding it after such a prediction helps bolster the theory. Working with fruit flys and bacteria have allowed many of the concepts of evolution to be tested, and have help refine the theory. Creationists point to a book and a failed understanding of complexity theory, with little else to stand on. That attitude, in the guise of being "scientific" infuriates me.

Re:Playing God, with hilarious results.

That creationist argument is debunked here [sciam.com] (number 15):

"Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells."

Astronomical?

First:
I hate to be the one to point this out, but astronomical or not, there are thousands and thousands of these bacteria in every cup of water, and the pond is a lot bigger than that.

And so is the ocean.

And they've had literally millions of years to stumble upon it.

I'm not sure what your definition of Astronomical is, but maybe you don't see what I see.

Second:
The mutations didn't all need to happen at the same time. As long as the original mutations didn't give the organism some disadvantage, there's no reason why it couldn't have spawned thousands and thousands of other organisms with the same oddity, and one of those could subsequently have evolved into the bacteria we see today. Remember, selection pressure works in both directions: unless something is being selected against, it isn't selected out of the gene pool.

Re:Astronomical?

Astronimical = 2.734 metric craploads

FYI

Re:Playing God, with hilarious results.

This theory is currently derided and discriminated against in favor of older theories

Are you trolling, or just entirely ignorant of human history? The OLDEST, most WIDELY ACCEPTED theory of biological diversity is creationism.

Evolution and natural selection are very new ideas (relatively), and are still not believed by most people on the planet.

As for "how much of our biological model it predicts", well of course it does. It's specious/circular logic:

"Something complex needs intelligence to make it, therefore something intelligent made everything that is complex."

"I don't understand the origins/purpose/design of something, so it MUST have been created by something even more intelligent than myself."

Re:Playing God, with hilarious results.

You're missing the point. Evolution has no solution.

Evolution doesn't work towards an end result. That's part of what makes it so difficult to understand. Since there's no stable environment, there's no ultimate solution.

scaffolding theory

I know there are several other theories that explain how irreducibly complex structures could evolve through agencies other than "intelligent design". The only one I can think of at the moment is the "scaffolding" theory. According to this theory, there are intermediate elements that are developed during the evolution of the complex organ, but they are lost when the entire organ is created and the intermediate parts become redundant.

In an analogy, the intermediate pieces are the equivalent of the scaffolding that holds up an arch while the arch is under construction. When the arch is completed, the scaffolding can be removed, making it appear to people who don't understand arch-construction (but do understand physics) that the arch must have been created by magic.

I don't know anything about flagelli, so I couldn't give you an example of how there could be intermediate stepping-stones to a completed flagellum.

Also, it doesn't make the resultant complexity any less cool. It probably is even more cool because it was created by evolutionary pressure rather than intelligent design.

Re:Playing God, with hilarious results.

. This article brings up the point that this device, which is not exclusive to pond scum, is "irreducibly complex"

The rhetorical trick we see here is to slip a logical fallacy into the prelude, so it appears to be an indisputable axiom, rather than a challengable part of the argument.

In fact, those structures are not irreducibly complex. In the case of flagellum, scientists have already explained how incomplete organs were beneficial to microbes.

However, even if we do not have an explanation for how a complex structure could've evolved, that doesn't harm the theory of evolution. An inability to explain is not proof of falsehood. Just because you haven't seen a writeup walking through each and every little step of a process, doesn't mean that process can't work. (I don't think any human alive can truely understand all of the machines used for modern, daily life. Yet they carry on somehow.). In fact, given that primitive life was created so many billions of years ago in conditions that were so adverse to preserving evidence, it should be unsuprising that the precise details are unknown.

If one disgards arguments simply because one cannot personally comprehend every little detail, then creationism could be assailed with many more objections.

Re:Playing God, with hilarious results.

But this article [breakpoint.org] raises an interesting consideration. When I was in junior high, we took a brief field trip to collect pond water to view under microscopes, and one of the most interesting things was how those little critters with the thing called a flagellum would zoom around. This article brings up the point that this device, which is not exclusive to pond scum, is "irreducibly complex": it is made up of several parts, none of which separately would be of beneficial use to the creature employing it (in fact, such a creature would probably die off under natural selection.) The odds of a mutation creating all parts simultaneously are astronomical, and consequently, the only accepted theory that can sanely describe such a thing is intelligent design, which has been hinted at in many different real-life examples as well as probabistically explained by Pascal's Wager.

Intelligent design explains nothing. Please tell me how it increases the predictive capacity of any scientific theory in any way. All the intelligent design pushers do is observe something and say, "Aha! It must have been designed that way, or else it wouldn't work that way!" In other words, it's a tautology.

Furthermore, in an infinite universe, astronomical odds mean nothing. It had to happen somewhere in the universe; intelligent life just happened to happen here. Unfortunately for us, we're just as screwed when the sun burns out.

This theory is currently derided and discriminated against in favor of older theories, mind you, much as Galileo was in favor of the theory that the Earth was flat, because it threatens to dredge up the uncomfortable unknown. But like any theory, the more evidence that is found to support it particularly to the exclusion of existing theories, the more likely it is correct. So as skeptical as I am of intelligent design, I can't help but notice how much of our biological model it predicts. Has anybody heard anything more about this?

It's a load of horseshit. It does not add to the predictive capacity of any scientific theory and is completely circular in its logic. If human beings were intelligently designed, do you think we'd be using the same pipe for breathing and swallowing solid food, thus introducing a potential choking hazard? Or would we have blind spots in our eyes? Wouldn't our bodies be robust, meaning that any part can fail with the rest continuing on? Any flaws of this magnitude in any modern piece of technology would be considered completely unacceptable and the result of inexcusable incompetence on the part of the designer. All of the glaring flaws in the human body are easily explainable by evolutionary theory, but intelligent design is helpless to explain them without assuming that the designer is a complete retard.

Intelligent design is simply creationism in a clown suit, just like Windows 3.1 was to DOS.

What the hell...

Did I miss something?

Is it the 1st of April?

Surely you are pulling my leg yes?

Splicing/grafting plants together is not that hard, but I thought this could only be done with plants of the same eh..family.

They are.

They are both nightshades.

Tomato plants can get the Tobacco Mosaic virus, too.

Re:They are.

Tomato plants can get the Tobacco Mosaic virus, too.

Frightening. Is IE also vulnerable?

Re:They are.

Is IE also vulnerable?

IE is *always* vulnerable. ;-)

Solanaceae, to be precise

The Solanaceae family also includes potatoes, chile peppers, and eggplants.

So not just tomacco on your sandwiches, but also tomatsup and a side of potacco fries. A trip to taco bell would be loaded with tobalsa, in addition to tomacco. Tomeggplant parmesan with tomacco sauce would be absolutely loaded with it.

Tomatsup?

"Tomatsup"? Please post your "D'oh!" now or we will be forced to do it for you.

Re:What the hell...

Good question. I've got one of my own. I'lll preface this by saying that I know absolutely NOTHING about botany, or plants. I can barely identify an oak tree. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I can identify an oak tree. Now then,

So, you can graft together a fruit and tobacco, and get a fruit with nicotine. Could you graft a fruit and, oh, I don't know...say...a cannabis plant, and produce a fruit with THC? Would that be illegal? I mean, marijuana is illegal...but is a tomaijuana? (that would be a tomato with THC in it).

Purely theoretical, of course....just wondering and all ;)

Re:What the hell...

Try hops [tamu.edu].

It was reported by Warmke and Davidson (1944) that hop scions grafted onto Cannabis stocks produced cannabinoid resins and this led to interest in the technique as a means of producing such material while avoiding legal restrictions.

Re:What the hell...

If a Tomarijuana (or some such) plant is ever made (and the insane inflation of the price of marijuana created by the War on Drugs virtually assures that it eventually will be) it won't be done by simple grafting. It will be done with gene splicing, the gene that encodes the THC production in MJ will be inserted into another organism which will then produce THC in it's own cells. I don't know why this hasn't been done yet, it seems almost trivial considering the number of genetically modified crops that already exist. BAKED POTatoes anyone? (sorry) :-]

Hmm..

I wonder where they got the plutonium to grow the crop?

Someone's very happy

If Phillip Morris starts selling tomatos, I'm not buying.

Point...

Altria is Phillip Morris... or was, Phillip Morris International changed its name to Altria. Altria owns both Phillip Morris USA (the tobacco company), and Kraft Foods.

Soon, a Tomacco V8

It will be low calorie, high in vitamins and addictive. At least you get something for your nicotine poisoning.

Let's make our own TV show

Everyone seems to set about making the impossible things in TV shows become a reality. Perhaps we need to start a TV show where geeks get laid by hot chicks all the time?

Re:Let's make our own TV show

Don't lose hope. NBC is doing just that right now. It's called "Average Joe". See it here [nbc.com].

Re:Let's make our own TV show

Anyway, as long it's not 12 guys AT THE SAME TIME with the chick....

Yeah, geeks can already download plenty of that.

What to do if your kids won't eat their vegetables

Start them early with Tomacco's! They'll start craving vegetables.. then just give them regular tomatoes. They'll have already made the connection that tomatoes make you feel better!

Also seems like a good way to try to quit smoking?

Re:What to do if your kids won't eat their vegetab

"Vegetable originally meant any plant, as in "the vegetable kingdom", or Twenty Questions' opening gambit, "animal, mineral, or vegetable?" And fruit meant any edible plant part. With the development of the science of botany, however, the meanings of the words have shifted. Vegetable is now used to refer to herbaceous (non-woody) food plants or their edible parts. Fruits are the reproductive parts of a plant, the ripened ovary of a flower and its contents and related parts; vegetables as well as other plants like trees can have fruits." Source. [everything2.com]

Botanical vs. Legal

yes, tomato is a fruit technically

Yes, botanically the tomato is a fruit. However, legally, according to the Supreme Court of the United States, tomatos are vegetables [findlaw.com].

Re:Botanical vs. Legal

Hmm... I guess the Supreme Court has the power to overrule the laws of nature.

This Might Be The First Patent Application...

Wherein The Simpsons serves as prior art.

You Just Can't Stop Eating Them!

They're simply addictive! We hope to have a full line of Tomacco snack food products on the shelves as soon as we can get the pro-forma FDA approval.

-- R.J. Reynolds

Now!

Let's get this guy working on the raining donuts!

The return of the killer tomatoes

I can see the crowds at the movie theaters...

Nicotine not so bad

Setting fire to tobacco leaves and breathing in the smoke gave Nicotine, an innocent bystander (in moderation), with potential for improving the brain's concentration levels, a bad name.

Bad company corrupts good character. And in the case of Nicotine, bad cigarette companies.

Re:Nicotine not so bad

marko123 sez: "Setting fire to tobacco leaves and breathing in the smoke gave Nicotine, an innocent bystander (in moderation), with potential for improving the brain's concentration levels, a bad name."

A bad name is right.

When the Taino people discovered and rescued that lost Italian guy, Columbus, he saw that they took these dried leaves, rolled them up into a tube, lit them on fire, and breathed in the smoke through their nose. When he asked them what they called that, they replied "tobago".

Tobago is Taino for "tube". It started with a misunderstanding, and that continues to this day.

The original residents of North America have always considered tobacco to be a medicinal plant, to the point of being considered sacred. Science is now finding that nicotine is beneficial to several disorders. Furthermore, there's something in tobacco (other than nicotine) that prevents Parkinson's in two-thirds to three-quarters of people who use it. And yes, that's adjusted for mortality/comorbidity.

As with anything, it's a matter of using it appropriately, or bad things happen.

This is possible because. . .

the tomato and tobacco are both variaties of nightshade, as is the potato.

All of these plants already contain nicotine, so of course he found them, and various other alkaloids. The only question is the concentration and where that concentration is.

You'll also find nicotine in things you might not expect, like bananas, beef, cow's milk and cottage cheese.

Eat a tomato leaf, potato leaf, or even the wrong parts of a potato and you can end up, very, very dead.

Enjoy your fries and ketchup.

KFG

Re:This is possible because. . .

I've seen that in health-nut sites & rags, but as biologists classify things, there is a very large family Solanaceae, which has genus Nicotiana (including those bad Nicotiana Tabacum species), and genus Solanum, which includes over 1400 species including the beloved spud & tomatoes. So really not too closely related.....I suspect many health nuts were dropping too much LSD in the 60's instead of paying attention in biology class.

Tomato is legally a veggie (in the US at least)

Bizarrely enough, there's actually a US Supreme Court Decision on this (Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304 (1893)). There was a tariff on fruits, but not veggies, imported from the West Indies. Plaintiff claimed that, since tomatoes are fruits, his imported tomatoes should be exempt from the tariff. The Supremes begged to differ:

"Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of a vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans and peas. But in the common language of the people ... all these are vegetables, which are grown in kitchen gardens, and which, whether eaten cooked or raw, are, like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery and lettuce, usually served at dinner in, with or after the soup, fish or meats which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not, like fruits generally, as dessert.

"The attempt to class tomatoes with fruit is not unlike a recent attempt to class beans as seeds, of which Mr. Justice Bradley, speaking for this court, said: 'We do not see why they should be classified as seeds, any more than walnuts should be so classified. Both are seeds in the language of botany or natural history, but not in commerce nor in common parlance.'"

Hence, tomatoes are legally vegetables in the US, botany be damned.

Re:Tomato is legally a veggie (in the US at least)

So is corn; it's botanically a fruit (in fact, an achene, IIRC), and nutritionally a starch, but nearly always treated as a vegetable. Just because the Supreme Court can't be bothered to do the Right Thing(tm) doesn't mean that we should tolerate it. Take back the tomato! Demand the fruits of justice!

Re:Tomato is legally a veggie (in the US at least)

Corn is a grass, and is classified along with the other grasses: oats, wheat, barley, etc. I guess you could call the husk a fruit but since we only eat the seeds I wouldn't.

Tomacco Patches?

Would ketchup packets replace nicotine patches?

An open plea to the Simpsons writers:

An open plea to the Simpsons writers:

Please, more episodes about cold fusion.

Thank you.

I'm wondering when someone will do the same...

... but with marijuana plants. Tomajuana anyone?

Wouldn't work with marijuana

This worked with tobacco because the nicotine is created in the roots and then transported to the rest of the plant. It wouldn't work with marijuana because the THC is produced in resin glands right where it's found (rather than transported there). The roots have no resin glands and practically no THC. (Read this [growing-marijuana.org])

In order to do something like this with marijuana you'd have to resort to genetic engineering.

This is sooo old news! The Reds beat us to it!

Its common knowledge that tomatos can be grafted on to a wide range of plants in the Solanum family including potatoes, tobacco, Datura, etc. In fact the Russians made a tomacco back in 1956 (See Glavinic, R., 1956 (Vegetative hybridization between tomato and tobacco). Priroda (Nature), Leningrad No. 11: 98-100. (Russian)).

Now if we only had only had slashdot back in 1956.....

Re:This is sooo old news! The Reds beat us to it!

Having in mind that 1956 was still a year when Lysenko (Stalin's ally, Genetic killer) was at power in Soviet biology, I would be really not sure about the real results produced for this paper...

Warning: Botany lesson inside

Tomato fruits are actually berries. Ironically, raspberries are not really berries, but are "aggregates of drupelets" (a good example of a drupe is a plum, a single seed surrounded by fleshy material). Strawberries aren't true berries either, because their seeds are on the outside of the fruit.

In general, if what you eat has seeds (or is supposed to have seeds, like bananas and certain grapes), they you are eating fruit. We eat corn and bean fruit by strict botanical definitions. "True" vegetables are when we eat the leaves, roots, stems, or flowers.

We (mankind) have done so much genetic manipulation with our crops (for milleniums, not just from Monsanto) that most would never be able to survive without our continued cultivation.

Whether we domsticated them, or they domesticated us, is debatable. From their perspective, it looks like they have enslaved the human race to do their bidding (spread their genes around the would and into the future).

Re:Warning: Botany lesson inside

Ask her this:
If you take the corn, leave it on the cob for a few more weeks, then grind it up and make a tortilla or corn chips, does it still count as a vegetable ?

From a dietician's perspective, she's guiding you into general nutrition groups and helping you balance your intake of carbs, fats, proteins, etc. so in reality it's ok to count it as a vegetable.

Corn is a grass, so is sugarcane and bamboo shoots. Corn chips (fried in vegetable oil, of course) and corn syrup (Karo syrup brand around here) are certainly yummy ways to get your vegetables!

Had to be said.

Worst... plant... ever.

Yum!

Goes great with a nicotini [sun-sentinel.com]!

Garg

I'll take a crate

Maybe we'll start seeing actors eating a LOT of tomatoes in TV and movies.

You saay tomacco

I say tobato

A graft is not a genetic change

I can't believe no one mentioned this already (I searched the comments page.)

In a graft, which is what has been done here, you stick the stem of one plant (tomato in this case) onto the root of another (tobacco in this case). If the two plants are closely related (as are tomatoes and tobacco,) the hybrid plant will grow and survive; often, chemicals (nicotine in this case) will move in the sap from the roots to the leaves (and presumably fruit.)

This is NOT a genetic change. If you took these "tomacco" seeds and planted them, they'd grow into regular tomatoes. Making the genetic changes required for tomatoes to actually make their own nicotine [caryacademy.org] (which would breed true,) is an entirely different and more complicated prospect.

A few points

• Nicotine, when not smoked, is not /that/ bad. Cigarettes are highly addictive because of it, but most of its deadly effects (cancer, mainly) are not due to it, rather to combustion byproducts.
• Nicotine is very addictive in cigarettes, slightly less so in cigars and pipe, and less so when chewed, because its addictivity varies depending on how much time it takes for it to reach the brain. That's about 7s IIRC with cigarettes. Uptake much slower through other ways.
• It's been experimented succesfully as a replacement for Ritalin / amphetamines in treating ADHD in the form of patch in children.
• Nicotine is destroyed in the stomach. That's why nicotine replacements for quitting smokeing have to go through other means: skin (patches) or mouth tissue (gum and sublingual pills).

Re:A few points in REALITY

Nicotine is actually a poison [oklahomapoison.org]. Before downplaying the intake of poison [umaryland.edu] I would learn the facts [hyperdictionary.com]. As for cigarettes and the diseaes they help bring on [pmusa.com] learn about how they get those little numbers [pmusa.com] on their packs before thinking you are any less exposed.

Course, you could just prove it all wrong by soaking a pack or two of cigarettes in 32oz of water and chugging it after cutting off your phone service and access to medical help.

Updated Movies

The bed scene, after the lovin' is done...

"Marinara sauce?"

What we need next.

Next we need
popplers, Slurm, and solent cola.

Re:Tomatos aren't fruits.

"It is knowledge that tells us that a tomato is a fruit. It is wisdom that keeps us from putting it in a fruit salad."

MT

Idiot

This is a hybrid. It was created by grafting the roots of a tobacco plant with the stem of a tomato plant. Both are in the nightshade genus, so they grafted OK. This is not a seeding, or reproducing plant. It's a single freak. Thereis no genetic engineering involved, just plain old grafting, a practice that has ben practiced safely for over 1500 years. Get a life freak!