Decaffeinated, Real Coffee

reeb writes "ABC News Australia reports that Brazilian scientists have discovered a naturally occurring but rare coffee plant, native to Ethiopia, that is 'almost free of caffeine.' Decaf without the genetic engineering?"

Yippee!

[justanyone]

Cross breeding may take a while, though, so maybe by the time I'm not allowed to have caffeine anymore (vis-a-vis old age restrictions on my cardiac function) I'll have that option.

Granted, I'm not 18 anymore, but I'm not 40 yet either.

Could be useful

[Dr. Spork]

I don't think I'm alone in preferring big cups of very strong coffee (made with an espresso machine), but I'm not always interested in the huge shot of caffine that a large, dense cup of espresso gives me. I get jittery, post unwise things online, and generally have to pace for a while before the peak buzz wears off and I can get real work done. So if this stuff could be bred with some of the really tasty beans to produce a delicious coffee that has, say 20% of the caffine, that's the stuff I'd be buying. (As long as FairTrade growers grew it.)

Re:Why are you afraid?

[cgreuter]

What is the problem with "genetic engineering"? We've been doing it for ages with breeding, as has "nature."

What we traditionally call "genetic engineering" is different from breeding or natural selection because it adds genes that weren't there before while breeding just juggles them about. And the problem with it is that we don't yet understand this sort of DNA manipulation or its consequences well enough to know what will happen when we dump it into the ecosystem. And yet we--or at least Monsanto's customers--are.

I don't agree with the thinking behind a lot of the anti-GM groups but I think that, for the moment anyway, I agree with their goals.

genetic engineering?

[Goldsmith]

Decaf coffee is (or at least can be) produced from "real" coffee by soaking it in supercritical carbon dioxide. Last I checked, that was relatively cheap, effective, environmentally friendly and has nothing to do with genetic engineering.

Re:Why are you afraid?

[SEE]

What we traditionally call "genetic engineering" is different from breeding or natural selection because it adds genes that weren't there before while breeding just juggles them about.

False. Selective beeding and natural selection both involve the addition (through "natural" radiation, "natural" chemical mutagens, and "natural" retroviruses) of geners that weren't there before.

For example, there's a specific DNA sequence that, oddly enough, occurs in both certain breeds of cattle and the rattlesnakes that live in the region where that variety of cattle originated. It's probably the result of a retrovirus that was in the snake population, and was transferred to an ancestral cow by a snakebite. This natural inter-species gene transfer, of course, is identical to a standard method of interspecies genetic engineering -- except in deliberate genetic engineering we have some idea what the gene we're transferring does, and we know to keep an eye on the recipient of the genes. The natural version moves random genes, and we don't even know that it occured.

Re:Yippee!

[Deagol]

Not this again....

Yes, there are those of us who see these as two entirely different things. You (and the scientists) may think the end result is "the exact same result" but I'm sceptical. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

While by its very nature, DNA provides for some sanity checks on what's viable, artificial mingling of DNA in the lab hasn't been through as rigorous a Q&A procedure as good old natural reproduction. I don't care if the resulting "species" can continue to pro-create -- it cheated by skipping a few important steps to being with.

I'm not a Luddite, folks. I think the science is cool and promising. But I think we shouldn't "go there" until we know what the hell we're doing. Look at the panacea antibiotics once were, and now look at how royally screwed up the situation now is. Genetic fudgery can have far more catastrophic results fifty years from now.