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Science

Rice Genome Mapped 102

Posted by michael from the now-you're-cooking dept.
rampant_gerbil writes: "Apparently a company called Syngenta has sequenced the entire genome of the rice plant. Here is a link to the corporate press release. As the story points out, "Rice is the model for the other grasses, including corn and wheat," so this sounds like quite a milestone. Now if only they would engineer some nacho cheese flavor into those rice cakes..."
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Rice Genome Mapped More

Rice Genome Mapped

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  • Re:What about the vegies (Score:3)

    by jbuhler ( 489 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @08:44PM (#476285) Homepage
    Consider: a lot of the "vegetable" rennet used to make cheese in the USA comes from E. coli bacteria which have been genetically modified to produce rennin, an enzyme that is good at curdling milk proteins. Natural rennin comes from the stomachs of calves, and AFAIK the natural and engineered versions of the enzyme are chemically the same (as opposed to, say, curdling enzymes derived from plants, which must be chemically modified before they can be used to make cheese).

    I think microbial rennet is considered vegetarian, despite being an enzyme of animal origin. I know that cheese made with can be labeled kosher.
  • *ahem*

    Masses _already_ feed themselves. That is why they are masses. The thing to be careful of is that you don't introduce new more efficient forms of, say, rice- that require a well to be drilled, that require fertilizer and herbicides and the whole agribusiness infrastructure of the _American_ industrial farming system.

    And these GE variations on rice DO require these things.

    Just because masses in the third world subsist feeding themselves on indigenous crops does not mean they can afford to buy five pounds of Monsanto herbicide and drill a well to water the hungrier crops. The evidence is, you tell the farmers very persuasively that they will have 100X the rice, they buy into it, are given the rice to start off with, can't afford to maintain an industrial farm, go several lakhs in debt and die.

    The idea that this is a good or benevolent thing is, to say the least, curious.

    Put it this way: I daresay a lot of intelligent, educated, professional slashdotters are continually on their guard, aware of the various instances in which vast companies try to outwit them and put them in a dependent position- whether that's with software APIs, license agreements, terms of service for services, whatever. Most slashdotters are probably aware that it is necessary to be at least mildly vigilant, or you get hosed and other slashdotters laugh at you and call you a sucker.

    What justification is there for requiring poor subsistence farmers in India and other countries to be comparably well educated, wary, and informed on agricultural technology? What justification is there for expecting _them_ to 'know better'?

    And again, masses feed themselves. That is _why_ they are masses. Places like Somalia become hells of starvation for _political_ reasons, such as freemarket gangs with guns seizing all the food. These are not agricultural problems...

  • Speaking of which: http://www.abc.net.au/specials/shiva/shiva.htm [abc.net.au]

    Seems this wonderful technology is causing farmers to go bankrupt, commit suicide, sell off their kidneys to survive, not to mention the idea is to make a Wonderful Perfect Monoculture. Can we say 'incredibly, criminally stupid'? I would love to think that people can learn to associate focus-group tested spiffy names like 'golden rice' with the reality that this is a straight-out power grab that will _wreck_ large portions of the world, sabotage their economies and make them slaves to Monsanto, the 'benevolent provider' of the wonderful 'golden rice'. Read the article, "assistance" means video trucks sent into villages to convince farmers to switch over wholesale to the new crop- first one's free kid! and this spells the death of the farmer. Read the article!

    I'm sorry, in many ways I think this is more genuinely evil than anything that (for instance) Microsoft has done. MS tries to leech off rich yuppies and control what you think and how you communicate. Monsanto is _killing_ poor farmers by conning and lying to them.

    Now moderate me down, because I chose not to 'moderate' my opinion this time and say 'but gee, I'm sure they're all good people'. There's a limit.

  • Re:They're forgetting something (Score:4)

    by Chris Johnson ( 580 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @05:55AM (#476288) Homepage Journal
    Nah- here's how it works. The rice is sold at a loss, like game consoles. Then the company bleeds the farmer dry on fertilizer, pesticides etc. without which the new crop won't grow. The old crop grew fine, just not at USA agribusiness efficiencies, but the new crop needs a USA-type support structure to grow, which is not cheap.

    It's hardly hypothetical. Loads of farmers in places like India have gone from being subsistence-level (not 'hungry', just 'poor') to being bankrupt with a pile of fancy seed and unable to make the payments on the infrastructure. At first they tended to commit suicide but apparently selling off kidneys has become a more popular option, at least to start with- death is probably still the end result.

    It's not the food, not at all- it's the freaking process! You can't convert subsistence farmers to USA-style agribusiness. They can't afford crop dusters...

  • Posted by Kewlhandtek:

    maybe now we can find out what is wrong with those guys that put coffee can exaust pipes, big spoilers and yellows stickers on thier honda civics and think they can beat a mustang

  • Apparently you do have something against christians...you called them stupid.

    Actually, I think I agree with what he said. He said "...those stupid christians in office." To me, that means those stupid people who are christian and use it as an excuse for their views of things. Religion is a shitty choice of things to use to justify a view that otherwise might be considered a bit out there.

    I am a christian and I have nothing against genetically modified rice or crops or whatever. I don't have a problem with artificial insemenation (sp?), in vitro fertilization, or genetically modified people (clones included). But one should be ready to face the consequences of such actions. A lot of christians believe that damnation is a consequence of some of this stuff. Seems like a pretty harsh consequence... if I knew an action of a friend was going to have some major consequences, I'd probably talk to them about it.

    I personally find that the idea of eternal punishment for a finite infraction to be a very intolerant, and very sick idea. What justifies permenent suffering for limited fault? Perhaps murder, but I very much doubt that making a slightly different plant is a valid reason.

    Doesn't monsanto or someone have modified corn and grain? I believe, and I could be way off here, that they just use it as livestock feed. But we are still ingesting this indirectly.

    AFAIK, their modified corn & grains are eaten by humans, directly.

    The thing about genetic engineering is that what is done is that the genes that decide what proteins that a organism produces are changed. It's not that the DNA of the plant (or animal, etc) is ingested in a way that it is incorperated into the DNA of that which eats it.

    Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

  • And how would this new corn suddenly behave like a virus? Do you anticipate this corn having small protein structures containing RNA?

    I thought not.

  • grasses eh? (Score:3)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @08:05PM (#476292)
    I wonder if the end of "Road Trip" will actually come true when some hardcore science stoners come up w/an altered Marijuana plant that doesn't show up on tests, and becomes incredibly strong...

    ahhh, the wonders of modern science ;)
  • Companies will keep the changes proprietary information. Look the fight companies put up about labeling milk produced by cows given BGH.
    Also, there is talk about making seeds that are only good once. So farmers have to buy seeds each planting season. Poor countries would be indebt forever.
    Well, we just have to wait and see.

    -Brook Harty
    --
    It's kind of fun to do the impossible. -Walt Disney

  • This is the most privatized genome sequenced to date. The company does not intend to submit
    results to public databases as all previous
    sequencings have done, include the human.
    They will make small piece availabe to academic
    investigators who request. However, it can be
    had to knwo what you want.
  • As a vegetarian, the thought of rennet coming from E. Coli rather than cow stomachs is actually more comforting. Why? I don't know; probably because I grew up as a rancher, and memories of the slaughter house contributed to my being vegetarian. FWIW.

    Interesting and Informative post, BTW.
  • What if you couldn't feed your family? or pay taxes to avoid jail? Here's the gig, pete, when we say "subsistence farming" it's not a job, it's a way to "subsist" [m-w.com]. Maybe if you were faced with death by starvation you would say "Damn. What a gyp. Now I have to sell my kidney".

    And people are getting desperate enough to farm out organs when their land's no longer profitable.
    here's what we in the big fancy internet world call "search engine results" :
    wow [google.com]! it's like a miracle.
  • When they were building the atom bomb, there was a number of physicists who truly thought that the explosion would cause a chain reaction with our atmosphere, burning it off.

    Look, your fears seem real, but they are based on precautionary demagougery. To wit, do you imagine we fully understand chemistry? And do you acknowledge the potential for some VERY nasty compounds, yes? But just because the potential exists to cause massive harm, doesn't mean we shouldn't learn. And the ONLY WAY to learn about these matters, is to DO.

    What precautions that are reasonable and prudent, are being taken. Nothing more can be done, until we know more. And the only way to know more, is to do. If we KNEW what precautions to take, we wouldn't have to do the work, would we?

    But this nonsense of a "chain reaction".. please.. More detail.

  • (Geez, I've got a +1 Bonus, and I haven't had a chance to use it yet. This is too off-topic to waste a +1 on).

    That's a reference to the "Monkey Island" adventure game from Lucasarts. They had an adventure game before that called "Loom", and in "Monkey Island" one of the pirates wears a pin that says, "Ask me about Loom".
  • no they aren't.
    They have been smoking geneticlly engineered crap for a long time and they smoke more than americans.

  • So... (Score:1)

    by romper ( 47937 )
    ...when can we expent the patent on the gene sequence? Just one more thing for 'em...
  • From my point of view, as a so-called "ethical" vegetarian, if they genetically engineered a plant that had meatball-like objects hanging on it like fruit, I wouldn't be morally opposed to eating them. For me, the main reason to avoid eating meat is that someone had to kill an animal as the direct product of my meal.

    Now I know that there are all sorts of secondary, tertiary & so on, food (and other) products, which didn't directly require an animal to die on my behalf, but that's not the point of my post here. If genetic engineering puts a flavor in a plant product, that happens to be just like the flavor of a meat product, you still have to consider that you're only eating a plant that grew out of the ground, not an animal.

  • Scribes out of work (Score:3)

    by froz ( 69551 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @09:52PM (#476302)
    Seems those miniature scribes are out of business. You can now grow entire rice crops with your name printed on each grain.

    I'd still be impressed to see someone engrave the entire rice genome onto a single grain of rice. Long-grain will be accepted.

  • Do you think it's possible to re-arrange the genome to come up with personalized rice!

  • I seriously doubt, if a more abundant and hardy breed of rice is created to feed the world's hungry, that many third world inhabitants are going to turn down food on the basis that it's "unnatural".

    I seriously doubt, if an expensive patented gene technology will ever find its way into the stomachs of the world's hungry. Or was this an open-source project?


  • Eh? Must be a slow day at slashdot. Rice Genome. Good grief.
  • I vaguely remember hearing that there is at least one law which requires that photocopiers modify the image at least slightly (shrink or expand, stretch or degrade) so that people couldn't easily make decent copies of paper money.
  • People are going to have to get used to choosing genetically modified crops.

    --Scott
  • Apparently you do have something against christians...you called them stupid.

    I am a christian and I have nothing against genetically modified rice or crops or whatever. I don't have a problem with artificial insemenation (sp?), in vitro fertilization, or genetically modified people (clones included). But one should be ready to face the consequences of such actions. A lot of christians believe that damnation is a consequence of some of this stuff. Seems like a pretty harsh consequence... if I knew an action of a friend was going to have some major consequences, I'd probably talk to them about it.

    Right now I don't have a clue what the consequences of eating genetically modified rice are, so I can't be ready to face them. And as for modifying people...I'd probably avoid that one too. Probably. If I knew that my kid had some kind of disease that could be 'cured' with genetic modification, well, maybe I would do that.

    Doesn't monsanto or someone have modified corn and grain? I believe, and I could be way off here, that they just use it as livestock feed. But we are still ingesting this indirectly.
  • You are wrong about the DNA. Well, right in most cases, but I believe viruses (virii?) inject DNA (or some kind of genetic material) into cells, changing what they do (causes the cells to produce more virus particles or orangisms.)

    Dorking around with corn and grain or whatever could have the same affect.

    I'm not going to harp on religion much here, but come on: "Religion is a shitty choice of things to use to justify a view that otherwise might be considered a bit out there." Please.
  • At first they tended to commit suicide but apparently selling off kidneys has become a more popular option

    Oh please. Knock this crap off. You just might get taken a little more seriously if you tried using reason instead of emotion to make your points.

    The only alternative to being a farmer is suicide or selling off your own body parts? I'm not a farmer, but I have a specific job, and if for some reason I couldn't do that job (even if it was because of some Evil Greedy Corporation) I wouldn't say "Damn. What a gyp. Now I have to sell my kidney."

  • Do you know how the common "partial-birth abortion" is performed? In a nutshell, the "doctor" puctures the infant's skull with a sharp instrument, vacuums out the brain and cerebral fluid, then pulls out that body.

    Another guy who argues with emotion instead of reason. Would you still be against abortion if it happened in some more pleasant manner? I don't think you would. And if not, then you shouldn't be using this as your argument, because it has nothing to do with your stance.

  • Obviously I meant something like "I don't think you would change your mind."

  • However, it can be had to knwo what you want.

    I know what I want. I want you to not post using all bold.

  • Please guys..._don't_ mess around with things before you _really_ understand them.

    Another good reason for colonizing other planets. Experiment all you like. As long as you don't develop rice that can build a spaceship and conquer Earth, you should be OK.

  • It might work one of the mentioned pills for an insect which eats the manipulated rice and might cause the insect to mutate....I'd really love to get cleared up on this from anyone who did more work in this area than I did...

    Do not be alarmed, Huma...uh, Buddy. We^H^H They don't exist. No insects have mutated in sentient beings poised to take over the world as soon as you drop your.... I mean as soon as We drop Our guard. Really. Take it from me. Honest. Here, have some rice.

  • I doubt anyone (or very few) have heard of Syngenta, but I worked for their former named company so here's the scoop.

    They were just incorporated on Jan 1, 2001, as the result of the merger of 2 Novartis divisions and Zeneca. Novartis/Sengenta is an agriculture company (not really biochem) that specialize in herbicides and seed treatments for farmers.

    I'm wondering if this is a workup towards a "resistance gene", like the one that Monsanto inserted into a strain of corn to resist their Roundup herbicide.

    Novartis has dozens of herbicide products covering everything from wheat, corn, fruits and vegetables, turf, and flowers. All those plants and all those products make for some funky gene splicing.

  • I ask this because its not like this is in short suply or is hard to grow

  • GNU for Biology? (Score:3)

    by Cheshire Cat ( 105171 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @08:09PM (#476318) Homepage
    Just what the world needs: A company with a patent on the genome of one of, if not *the*, biggest grain food in the world. Want to modify your rice to feed your starving third-world country? Pay us a fee.

    I would much rather see something like this placed in the public domain, or better yet until a GNU-type license! Which brings me to the point of this: Is there anything like the GNU license for biological products?

  • The fight over GM crops isn't entirely (or even mostly) a religious one (although, I can see religious groups getting edgy about messing with god's creations). The fight tends to center more around the 'frankenstein effect' -- how creating a GM product can have unexpected side-effects.

    It's rather like the case of drug side-effects, except for the fact that, once you let a GM plant 'into the wild' it's almost impossible to recall it. By the time you find out that a plant is really bad to have in existence in the wild, the seeds and pollen could be far beyond the fields they're planted in.

    The CBC has an in-depth report [tv.cbc.ca] about a lawsuit stemming from the problem of rogue seeds. (These plants, thankfully, don't seem to be malignant.)
    `ø,,ø!

  • The whole point of the patent system is to encourage scientific discovery. The patent system exists "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
    The patent system needs to run a rather thin line. If it patents for too narrow a use, then the patent is useless. If it patents for too wide a use, then the patent may discourage investigation within a whole area of research by giving one company an effective monopoly in that area. I think that part of the complaint in the GM arena is that patents are being awarded both too easily and too broadly.

    Companies are in gold-rush mode, right now, rushing to be the first to reach (and patent) various benchmarks in the research process. The long-term fear, however, is that -- once that is done, the more specific (and useful) research in those areas is going to be effectively choked off as only one company has any incentive to do any research in that area.

    For us consumers, the apparent result is feared to be slower practical research with the results being far more expensive than they need to be because nobody else is likely to be doing any research in that same general field, and university researchers have to pay royalties/sign non-disclosure agreements to even do basic research.
    `ø,,ø!

  • The fight over genetic ownership has already started [tv.cbc.ca]. Monsanto "owns" the genetic mods for a version of Canola that is resistant to their "roundup" plant-killer. The seeds of a 'monsanto' crop apparently blew into a farmer's field, and he used them. Now Monsanto is suing him for using seeds that he found on his field.

    The apparent purpose of the lawsuit is to create a chilling atmosphere for other people so that they'll be afraid of using a seed if they even think that it could be one they claim ownership of. (up to this point, they've been relying on contracts with farmers that restrict them from using monsanto seeds without paying a fee. Unfortunately seeds don't know anything about contracts (the farmer in this case has not signed any sort of contract with the company.

    The extreme case for this sort of lawsuit would be where a company claims 'ownership' of a human genetic mod. Can you imagine the idea of a company claiming royalties for your children?

    Honestly, your honor, I did not know that my girlfriend was Monsanto modified. If I had, I would have probably chosen a different partner.

    Judge: Ignorance is no defence. O fine you $30,000 and order the child destroyed.


    `ø,,ø!
  • You sequence one genome then 15 minutes later, you feel like sequencing another.

    Rich

  • Re:grasses eh? (Score:3)

    by AnarchyBurger ( 115762 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @02:24AM (#476323)
    You should try growing some reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea), which looks like ordinary grass, but has DMT in it. DMT is a hallucinogen related to magic mushrooms and more distantly to LSD. Read the FAQ at Lyceum.org [lycaeum.org]
  • You have a very good point. With all of our technological advances and the ability now to make digital "copies" or clones of everything why can't Xerox or Canon come up with a copier that actually doesn't severly downgrade the copied image from the original. I mean come on the scanners we have now can handle resolutions far beyond our own optical resolution, and the color/black and white laser printers are very impressive. Actually the more I think about this the more I realize that the technology is there but no one has made it affordable yet...

    Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
    Domain Names for $13
  • Its certainly amusing that one one hand you have a plant like Cannabis, which has been subject to more tests than any other plant, and which has not been connected to a single death, and the verdict is `it may be harmful, we cant legalize its use`, and on the other hand we create all these new gm plants with bits of fish and got knows what else, and the verdict is `we`ll try them and see if anything bad happens`.
    You dont think its got anything to do with money, does it?
  • owever, to say that those out there spending billions of dollars making scientific discoveries shouldn't be allowed to recoup some profit (which is what patent elimination would do) is a drastic position. Company greed to make a buck off discovering things has fueled the explosion of scientific advances that we've made over the last century.

    Granted companies should be able to patent things to recoup money, that's what the patent system was created for. However, you are entering far different territory than steam engines or computer parts when you allow companies or individuals to declare they have sole rights to a sequence of amino acids. I'm not advocating eliminating the patent system as a whole, just the biotech aspect of it, something which didn't exist when the USPO was created. I would replace it with government funding; allow the citizenry, through their tax dollars, to fund biotech research. Yes, that's already done, but nothing says it can't be increased. I wouldn't want to see things such as gene therapy become so expensive that most people can't afford them if they need them. To see where it can head, just look at the pharmaceutical industry; companies "recoup" their research costs simply by charging outrageous prices for their products, which consumers have little choice in paying. They often need these drugs to survive, but the patent means no competition, so the companies can basically price them however they want.

    As for the explosion of scientific advances that we've made over the last century, I think just as much (or more) is owed to several factors beyond company greed. One is the snowball effect; certain discoveries beget other discoveries, like quantum physics influencing everything from the evolution of computers to quantum chemistry. Another is the nature of the scientific professions themselves, which connects an individuals prestige, financial, and professional success to their scientific work.
    --

  • Re:GNU for Biology? (Score:5)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <`nomadicworld' `at' `gmail.com'> on Saturday January 27, 2001 @08:17PM (#476327) Homepage
    We shouldn't even need a GNU-type license for this; nobody should be able to patent any form of DNA, or even the methods used to analyze and modify genetic material. This is especially the case involving crops that feed a major percentage of the world's population. Some of the biotech patent issues make software patents look sane by comparison; anyone remember how one Texas-based company patented Basmati rice? Apparently several thousand years of cultivation by Indian farmers didn't constitute prior use; this is being challenged by the Indian government, but that the USPO actually accepted this in the first place is a sign of nearly criminal incompetence.
    --
  • Steak flavored rice

    Just announced. Tastes just like steak (lobster flavor out soon), contains all the required vitamins and minerals. Only 2 calories.

    5 cents per pound.

  • Well... RSA Data Security Inc. was able to patent the simple mathematical truth behind RSA encryption.
    I guess you could apply for a patent that 1+1=2 and sue people for using that truth.

    --
  • It was developed using *public* funds at several universities. That alone should mean that it should have been in the public domain.

    The theory behind the algorithm is complicated but the actual implementation is *extremely* simple. It's just basic modular algebra on large numbers.

    If I developed a proof, using public funds, that a(b + c) = ab + ac, should I disallow others (who have indirectly paid for its development) from freely using it?

    --
  • i can't wait for rice on the cob.
  • Have they found the part of the genome that leads to the creation of Rice cars?
  • im rather impressed by this, solely for the reason that eventually, this will greatly help the world's food supply issues. to genetically engineer grains and rice to say, for example, be resistant to disease, or yield greater supplies, will change the world.

    or glow-in-the-dark rice. that would rule.
  • e.coli bacteria genome (that is one nasty-arse bacteria)...

    off-topicish, but id disagree. e.coli is used extensively for genetic research. inserting dna into e.coli's bacteria allows for much of the genetic research in vitro today. splicing vectors in and out allows you to research what genes in humans, and other animals, are responsible for production of certain proteins, etc.

    being familiar with its genome would only serve to strengthen such research.
  • I believe the French government has been placing human genome data in the public domain. I don't have any references for this however. Any french people care to comment?
  • Can't you do this already? Just boil the rice in schlitz or golden annivesary? =P

    E.
    www.randomdrivel.com [randomdrivel.com] -- All that is NOT fit to link to
  • I've always wanted to try a slightly different idea: Genetically engineer some standard lawn grass to contain THC. Maybe give it some other characteristics that make it grow just a bit better than regular grass. Grow plenty of it, then start planting it wherever you can. Your own lawn, your neighbors' lawns, city parks, anywhere.

    If it manages to propagate quickly enough, it provides a perfect workaround for all those pesky laws about schedule 1 narcotics. Let's see the guvmint try to outlaw lawns. Nobody would have to mow their lawns anymore, either. All the stoners would be doing it for free.

    As for making stealth weed, you'd first need to know exactly what chemicals the tests look for, then try to find some chemical that will still have the same psychoactive effect but won't be detected. Trouble is, the tests would probably change to look for the new chemicals in a few months.

  • Re:Genetically modified anything is... (Score:3)

    by caffeinated_bunsen ( 179721 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @12:38AM (#476338)
    This whole thread is gonna be kinda redundant, but I'll explain this anyway:

    > Charging people money for something that could potentially solve a world problem should be criminal.

    By that logic, every farmer who has ever sold a bushel of corn or wheat should be in prison.

    If you want to go and spend a couple million dollars on gene sequencing equipment, pay a few dozen scientists living wages for a year or two, and not ask for any money in return, go ahead. Really. The world can only benefit from it. Maybe we should start a non-profit organization to promote public domain genetic research. But if you don't have several million dollars to blow, then you're gonna want some return on that investment.

    Many recent patents on biotech, genetics, and technology in general are absurd at best. That doesn't mean the whole idea of making a profit from investment and hard work (yes, some of the people involved actually put forth a hell of a lot of effort) is fundamentally evil. Outright exploitation, as we see so often today, is definitely evil.

    Our patent system is fucked up in a big way, and some people exploit that to eliminate anything that might keep money away from them. But just because a company tries to make money from doing genetic research doesn't make them evil. Just because a company files a patent doesn't make them evil. Exploiting already impoverished people would make them evil. Restricting scientific research would make them evil. So far, I don't see the company in question doing either one of those. Until they do start exploiting people, or using the patent office to stifle science, or anything else generally shitty, I won't get too angty at them.

  • They are still quite ignorant about exactly what each letter of the genome means.

    Since I've commented on this before, all I will say in passing is that I take it to be the equivalent to having successfully transcribed the alien equivalent of the dead sea scrolls. Now they got to figure out the language and find out what it is saying.

    I suspect that, like all good code, the educational part will be in the comments.

    A similar situation was the speculation about Egypt before the rosetta stone. The fantastic phantasies that were spun are incredible. And it turned out to be very different from what they imagined. So the scientists have a big job ahead of themselves.

    as a side note, I do not think that they should be able to patent anything from that gene sequence until they can explain in full detail what each encoding means and how it encodes what it does.

  • Well, I suppose it could be considered to contain meat, but then so does everything we eat. They're are microorganisms and even insect parts in anything we consume. It doesn't seem to make lettuce any less vegetarian. I don't see why having minute DNA strands of animals in plants would make it any less vegetarian.
    -----------------
    It's not really funny, unless someone doesn't get it
  • I don't know if I would say it is a model for the other grasses. Many plants have genomes which are vastly larger than that of even advanced mammals. Rice is an exception to this, with about 430 million base pairs, compared to humans with about 3000 million. Wheat and Maize, however, have over 10000 million base pairs (most of which is not used, obviously). There is still much we don't know.
  • Basically, they will allow [biotechknowledge.com] "poor countries" to use thier GMO without charge, but reserve the right to charge for it in developed nations. Not quite the GPL, but it is better than the same old.
  • > I ask this because its not like this is in short > suply or is hard to grow

    A couple things, I'd say, they would look at doing:
    - Disease resistance (for obvious reasons)
    - Can be grown in less/salt water, as a lot of water is needed to grow rice.

  • ugh (Score:3)

    by benshutman ( 202482 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @08:13PM (#476344) Homepage
    call me simple.... all these gene work, cloning, genome mapping etc.. all i want to do is be able to go to kinkos and make a damn black and white copy turn out the same as the original. come on people, lets get our priorities straight.


    NEWS: cloning, genome, privacy, surveillance, and more! [silicongod.com]
  • This makes you wonder how this development will affect the projects of individuals like Ingo Potrykus, the creator of "Golden Rice" (see previous story here [slashdot.org]). His efforts to create a beta-carotene enhanced strain of rice to fight malnutrition has already been seriously challenged by patent holders of the genetic transfer techniques used to create it.

    Now with a company claiming to have mapped the genome of rice, will they try to restrict use of genetic modification to those who pay royalties for use of "their" genome? Before you pass judement on this line of thought, you may want to consider the fact Potrykus wants to provide his rice at cost or lower to ensure the people who need it are able to afford it. In today's cutthroat legal world, I doubt a company (or more specifically their lawyers) would idly stand by and watch someone give away something they could sell for profit.

    For more information, see this article in Time [time.com].

  • Well, since they didn't create the rice, how can they patent this stuff? Isn't that like patenting the formula for (insert some chemical that's been around since the beginning of time)?

    __________________________________
    all misspellings were intentional.

  • Boy, if I were Uncle Ben, I would be fucking pissed. And you know he's a mean mother fucker, too. Big bald black(ish) guy. Damn he'd fuck you up if you fuck with his rice. That's man's got class. You know he drives his fuckin' rice powered ferrari everywhere and he carries a gun, but just a fashion statement, you know everyone's afraid to try anything with him. Man, sheeit, you don't want to fuck with my main man, Uncle Ben.

    Apologies: drunk

  • Now you know who i'd like to see get into a fight: Uncle Ben and the Quaker Oats man. But they could tag team. Quaker Oats Man/Wilfred Brimley vs. Uncle Ben/Louis Gosset Jr. (of Jaws III fame). That would be fucking cool.

  • What about the vegies (Score:3)

    by mr_exit ( 216086 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @08:08PM (#476349) Homepage
    What i've wanted to know is if you have a plant (say rice) and engineer into it some genes from an animal (say steak or meatballs).... and heres the tricky part......... would it be vegeterian or not??

    -------
    Drink Coffee - Do Stupid Things Faster And With More Energy!
  • If you just transplant animals' genes you are in trouble - it won't be purely vegetarian anymore. But if the animals' genes are consructed by the researches from scratch, then the plant would remain vegetarian.

    This method has already been used to circumvent the US export regulations and create the international version of PGP.

  • Don't f... with mother nature.
    Sure it's neat to just remove a few unwanted features or maybe add a few. But who can predict what small changes will have in 20 years. And then it might be to late because the original has been lost in time. Has happened before with animals where they now try to breed it back to the "original version."
    Does all the mean that we wil have people coming out in their little ships chaining themself to the next big shipment of rice. And if they do, will anyone care, I think not. Personally I'd rather be watching TV.

    --------
  • While I'm not in support of patents at all, I must say that what you said is a bit non sequitur. There is a difference between a Genome and a particular DNA sequence.
  • What a fuck has uncle Ben (Big bald black(ish) guy -/deeznutsclan/) to do with rice? I think they made this "Uncle Ben " label for cotton underwear and it got mixed up in print shop or something. Why not uncle Li's rice blaah and Zii Emilios Pasta blaah...
  • ...sure and if they get a few genes the wrong way around the rice will just stand up and eat everyone trying to harvest it...or - on a more serious note - we'll get some chain reaction with insects or other plant's dna because of the modified rice which creates Ebola v2...

    Please guys..._don't_ mess around with things before you _really_ understand them.
  • Sure, that's absolutely correct. "No risk no fun" and no fast advances in technology.

    But we should _at least_ try to find out how large the risks are. When building the atom bomb people knew that this will be a powerful weapon, able to rub out a whole continent. But at that time they new how the atom worked and they were pretty sure that the bomb would not lead to serious side effects which they did not know about before.

    That's not the case with genetics. We don't know much about how genes _work_. Changing a few might lead to serious chain effects and we don not even know the probability for this to happen.

    It's like knowing one line of code which initializes a variable to a specific value and changing it's type from long to short. You'll never know which side effects this will have to your _programm_.

    Please don't get me wrong. I'm strongly science oriented and I'd be the last one who wants to halt science advancement. But that ones scares me a bit, so I guess it's really worth discussing it...

    cheers
    mike
  • Well, I'm definitely no genetic engineer. I did read some books about the topic, but I'm still just a software engineer, so I can't say that I'm an expert on the topic.

    But I pretend to know that it's quite easy to change ones dna just by eating the right pills. So let's get back to that rice example. Let's say we'll change a few genes of the rice dna to make it stronger. We do know that it will make it stronger, but we do not know what other side effects this will have. It might work one of the mentioned pills for an insect which eats the manipulated rice and might cause the insect to mutate. This does not have to be bad, maybe the insect will just change its behaviour and some birds who rely on these insects as a food source will not be able to find them anymore because they changed their behaviour. Well those birds will have to change too, or they will die out.

    That's nothing really drastical, one would say that happens in evolution "every day", and I'll have to agree on that one.

    But aren't similar types of genetic engineering used to develop dangerous bioviruses? Is the chance that the manipulated rice will cause some other life forms to change and in the end produce some hazard virus really that low?

    I'd really love to get cleared up on this from anyone who did more work in this area than I did...

  • so this sounds like quite a milestone. Now if only they would engineer some nacho cheese flavor into those rice cakes...

    Oh yeah, that would be great. Especially for all of us out here who are geeks as a direct result of childhood irritable bowel syndrome and an inability to digest milk products.

    Here's my story. Sixth grade...start getting the good ol' green apple quickstep really bad for no reason. By eighth grade I had no social life because I was afraid to go out with anyone I didn't know very well because of how embarassing it could be if I disappeared in to the bathroom for a good twenty minutes. It wasn't until ninth grade that I discovered that in actuality it never would have gotten that bad if it hadn't been for milk.

    No, it doesn't sound bad. But look at it this way. Everything with the least amount of a milk product in it, even something like butter flavor (in Kellog's Rice Krispie Treats), or milk protein, or whey...and that means virtually everything prepared in a food chain restaurant or a factory...was causing me to have painful, embarassing diarrhea. And since I hadn't known what was causing it, and had no way of predicting when it would happen, I was constantly anxious about it; this anxiety increased tenfold when I was doing stuff with friends, or doing something public. Or, in class. Anxiety triggers irritable bowel syndrome. And irritable bowel syndrome triggers anxiety. So it got worse and worse until I finally went to see a gastroenterologist (and it turns out that no, it's not an allergy, just a bad reaction--a very bad one). Luckily, things have gotten better now that I'm a junior in high school, and I can have a social life. But still no milk. Stupid *explitive deleted* pizza... And never will I be able to lick whipped cream off of my lover.

    Well, anyway. I imagine that if they were ever able to make rice milk flavored, many, many people would die before it was over, and there would be far fewer nerds sitting at home reading slashdot because they couldn't have a social life due to an undiscovered case of irritable bowel syndrome combined with a milk allergy.

    Just my 8192 cents.
    Aciel
    aciel@speakeasy.net
  • Unfortunately the non-dairy kind always has some remnant of baby-cow-food. Thus making it inevitable. If you look very closely at the label of something like Non-Dairy Coffee Creamer you'll see it: "whey" or "casein" or "milk flavor;" something along those lines.

    Aciel
    aciel@speakeasy.net

  • Re:They're forgetting something (Score:3)

    by MWoody ( 222806 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @11:41PM (#476360)
    I seriously doubt, if a more abundant and hardy breed of rice is created to feed the world's hungry, that many third world inhabitants are going to turn down food on the basis that it's "unnatural".

    Of course, feeding the poor offers little financial gain, so they likely won't much care about the wishes of the penniless.
    ---
  • I don't think any "irresponsible" action makes a woman deserve to be the slave of someone for the next 18.75 years of her life (and the better ones OTOT).

    You want decent pro-choice arguments ? look here [elroy.net]
  • The whole point of the patent system is to encourage scientific discovery. The patent system exists "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The way the system is supposed to work is like so: It takes a lot of money to map a genome, and this way the individual/company can make some money off their discovery. If there were no patent law, they a) wouldn't be as motivated to explore, b) if they did map the genome and made some genetically modified products (but didn't patent them), they wouldn't have to share the details of the discovery because it would be a trade secret (like the formula for Coke; there are stiff penalties if someone leaks it, and competitors are barred from trying to infiltrate Coca Cola headquarters to learn it; they must independently discover the formula to have a legal claim). This way, the details of the discovery are available to other scientists, though they are limited in applying the knowledge for a short period of time (around 20 years, IIRC) while the discoverer can make a proft.
  • Believe me, they've thought of this. When experimenting with crops, genetic engineers deliberately make them so they can't reproduce. As a result, Farmer Max could theoretically grow normal corn next to feed corn genetically modified to make his pigs more healthy, next to corn artificially high in vitamins that people don't get in the third world, and the corn won't interbreed.
  • e.coli bacteria genome [go.com] (that is one nasty-arse bacteria) and
    Cholera [core.org.au] (I assume mapping the genome is the same as decoding it ? I am not sure on this one)

    I suppose we can just sit back as people decode anything within reach - Still I don't like it when we(humans) mess with the building blocks of life - I'm sure we'll stuff soemthing up.
    --

  • "off-topicish, but id disagree. e.coli is used extensively for genetic research. inserting dna into e.coli's bacteria allows for much of the genetic research in vitro today. splicing vectors in and out allows you to research what genes in humans, and other animals, are responsible for production of certain proteins, etc."

    I didn't mean to imply that research with the bacterium is bad. I concur (I wasn't aware that e.coli was used as a host for the gene vectors as you pointed out) it may be a very useful research tool. I was referring to the articles mention of the fact that e.coli "in the wild" often pics up bits of genetic material from it's host (which no doubt is related to what you mentioned) and hence makes it hard to identify & treat. Just a clarification of my point - I understand what you mean =)
    --

  • This will Never be usefull in the united states with all those stupid christians in office(I have nothing wrong with christianity, I just think that Religious and moral arguments and ideas should be left out of Politics). This is more a triumph for the Third world. Now india can grow crops with twice the nutritional value, and produce twice as much in the same amount of area. The United states has enough food anyways, but beef flavored rice would be nice!!!!

    -The oh so nervis one
    ----"Casius Senex Mucidusque Est" -me
  • Mr LinuxPimp,
    I have only one question to ask you; How would you like it if someone copywrighted your UNIQUE DNA Sequence?
    -The oh so nervis one
    ----"Casius Senex Mucidusque Est" -me
  • Well. Depending on which genes you have more of. Let's say you have a Cow and a Gardenia broken down like this:

    More of Cow, not enough of Gardenia
    The Cow shaped animal will have no hair, but rather a thick leafy green skin rich in Iron and other nutrients. Near the end of this hybrid there will be a hole, known as an anus, which will periodically release a perfume like (but methanous) scent.

    More of Gardenia, not enough of Cow:
    The Really stalky looking plant will have a centralized circulation system. The flowers that bloom from this plant hybrid will smell somewhat, farmlike. During photosynthesis in this animal, rather than C02 being converted into 02, 02 will be converted to C02. Also, it is an urban legend that if you come up late at night with 2 or more people, you can tip these plants over if they are not paying attention.

    that is your biology lesson of the morning.

  • nobody should be able to patent any form of DNA, or even the methods used to analyze and modify genetic material

    I'm not saying that the Patent Office always makes great decisions about what patents to hand out. They could really use an audit of all of their policies to bring them in line with the fast-paced technology-centric world we live in today.

    However, to say that those out there spending billions of dollars making scientific discoveries shouldn't be allowed to recoup some profit (which is what patent elimination would do) is a drastic position. Company greed to make a buck off discovering things has fueled the explosion of scientific advances that we've made over the last century.

    It's easy to snipe at things that we don't like about our society, and criticism of practices will make us stronger if we figure out superior ways of doing things - but unless you're prepared to offer a better and complete system of commerce and government, maybe you should avoid proposing to dismantle capitalism and its required protections (patents, copyrights) just yet.
  • Speaking of which: http://www.abc.net.au/specials/shiva/shiva.htm [abc.net.au]

    Yikes, what an extraordinary piece of communist literature that is!

    For anyone inclined to believe this statement:

    Seems this wonderful technology is causing farmers to go bankrupt, commit suicide, sell off their kidneys to survive

    I encourage you to follow the above link and read it. That level of hatred of capitalism and free markets thrives in this world, and it's scary. It's scary because the people with all that hatred exaggerate the extent of the problems and their causes. It's scary because the only solutions that these people offer are the dismantling of capitalism and free markets, and a dramatic shift toward communism.

    Communism failed, people. Despite tremendous opportunities around the world, communism totally and utterly failed. Why oh why are people still making excuses for it and trying to sell it to us again in a new shiny box?

  • We see any number of stories saying how wonderful it would be for rice and other plants to be enhanced using genetic modifications, but I wonder what might be the possible negative effects of proposed GM modifications:

    • Making a GM rice with an unnaturally high level of vitamin X compared to a normal wild rice, might be ok for people who eat a balanced diet but people in a poor country would get a harmful overdose of X because rice is the only major food they can afford to eat.

    • Another issue is by making a GM plant with unnaturally high levels of nutrient X you open it up to new attacks from pests and diseases which share our preference for nutrient X .

    There might be a net gain from creating GM plants for certain applications but I think publications writing about absolutely "wonderful" new GM plants should try hard to give a balanced discussion of risks as well as of benefits.

  • By that logic, every farmer who has ever sold a bushel of corn or wheat should be in prison.

    No, farmers sell corn to make a living, and most of them cannot even do that. The government pays a lot of farmers NOT TO farm becuase if there is too MUCH corn the market prices on it will drop! If you think i'm full of crap go do some research and you'll find some very interesting things.

    I do not mind companies making money, if it sounded that way I apologize. My problem is companies patenting things they never made, DNA, they were just the first ones to sequence it. So what. Aspirin was never patented becuase it was Natural and by wording anything that comes from nature cannot be patented. Their claim is that the DNA is natural but the sequence of it had to be researched and therefore a patent can be made on the specific sequence, which does not make any sense.

    I'm tired and rambling, but you do have a good point, I agree that making money from investment is good, just dont let money be the guiding factor in anything that can become potentially dangerous.

    Lord Arathres

  • But... Monsanto gave away the rice genome (Score:3)

    by rochlin ( 248444 ) on Saturday January 27, 2001 @09:52PM (#476373) Homepage
    Monsanto, the biggest developer of genetically modified crops in the world, made the rice genome freely available last year. Press Release: href="http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto/media/00/00 aug4_goldenrice.html You need to register (on paper!) but the genome itself is available here: http://www.rice-research.org/>Rice Genome site. Much hoopla about this at the time. So what's the deal? (golden rice in the press release refers to rice with extra beta carotene for developing countries. They're offering the regular rice genome plus assistence in developing golden rice crops).
  • With issues like this cropping up (no pun intended) it becomes apparent that some sort of infrastructure for effective management, larger than that of a nation is needed; international issues need international oversight
  • Careful, there's more merit to what he posts than you may think.

    The problem in feeding the world isn't with growing enough food as much as it is with disributing the food we have efficiently; there's already enough food grown to feed the world over. Growing more food locally decreases the numbers of people that go hungry because local food is more easily distributed. If large scale distribution could be improved, perhaps a faster solution to this problem could be reached.

  • I question just how useful this will be until the debate over genetically modified crops is resolved; these companies will have to come to terms with the resistance to the use of crops like this.
  • This will also help with the splicing of genes that make vitamins like golden rice that gives a person their daily requirement on beta carotene Imagine a day where al of your dietary needs are in a rice cake.
  • Beer flavored rice!
  • Although I would prefer a Screwdriver, Kahlua, Jaegger, etc.... I do think it is interesting they are going to make Barley more nutricious.. I can see it now...

    "____: The only beer that is TRULY good for you"
  • Vegetarians as a rule oppose GM foods, and prefer to eat organic. And if you've not been eating meat for more than a year, just the smell of beef will disgust you, believe me.
  • As the above poster said, there is no world food shortage, but a *surplus*.

    I just thought I'd add that the countries with the most malnutrition, for the most part, have food production surpluses-- they grow more than enough food to feed their country, but which is more profitable to export to rich countries where people have several times more food than what they need.

  • Well, assuming that most nations adopt a sane stance to genetically engineered food (like that's going to happen), then this would be a Good Thing. Rice is incredibly easy to grow and a large percentage of the world population is already accustomed to eating it.

    How about a strand of rice high in all major vitamins and minerals? This would go a long way to help out with feeding the masses in third-world and so-called "body" nations.

    --

  • How about "Get a job." Sheesh.

    --
  • The real first step in deciding issues like this is having a government that doesn't drop in its knees when big business calls... we can talk about GNU for DNA till we're blue in the face, but it's never going to happen while big money runs the country.

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