Japanese Creating "Super Tuna" 280
motherpusbucket writes "The Telegraph reports that Japanese scientists hope to be breeding a so-called 'Super Tuna' within the next decade or so. They have about 60% of the genome mapped and expect to finish it in the next couple months. The new breed will grow faster, taste good, have resistance to disease and will totally kick your ass if you cross them."
Sashimi (Score:4, Insightful)
Cue that eco-maniacs (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like a good idea, rather then fish Tuna to extinction they're solving the problem by make better Tuna.
Now all we have to have to a bigass debate on slashdot about how this is going to make DRM zombie tunas while ignorantly forgetting the fact that "Natural" tuna have had their genes altered through hundreds of years of breading.. Basically like every other time DNA altering comes up in a story..
very dangerous practice (Score:2, Insightful)
People have been altering the genetics of plants and animals for as long as we have practiced agriculture.
However, doing this with modern techniques can present incredible risks, possibly as large as the risks
we face from environmental damage. There are significant consequences to altering genomes of existing
creatures, and mostly, people would try to be as careful as possible. Most all of the changes we've made
have been exceedingly helpful.
But there are a few unavoidable truths:
1- Humans cannot contain nature indefinitely - so whatever we create will eventually enter the environment and compete with the existing species.
2- Genomes, the resulting organism, and the myriad interaction with other species, viruses, and environmental conditions
are far too complex for humans predict any outcome reliably. We are blindly stabbing at potentially world-changing effects.
3- "Monocultures" increase risk. Even if this program is wildly successful, and they create a huge supply of "perfect" Tuna - they will be a single species, and their success will be a risk - a single other species or virus could wipe them out.
We want to establish a complete aquaculture system that will produce fish that have good strength, are resistant to disease, grow quickly and taste delicious.
In many ways TFA sounds a lot like the mentality Monsanto has: make more food for more people with fewer resources. This is completely backwards, and will fail us in a devastating way long term. Food availability is the single most important factor that drives population growth. The solution we need is not to re-engineer nature to meet the demands of growing populations better, but rather to focus on moderating the needs of people to fit within a natural environment created over 2 billions years which we *cannot* recreate if we destroy it.
In the end, the environment we live in has much "momentum" and "power" to inflict damage to the human race than we have power to control and shift the natural world to our needs.
Re:very dangerous practice (Score:5, Insightful)
Before you get too self-righteous, it's not necessarily quite that simple. First off, scarcity of food may possibly cause people (consciously or unconsciously) to have fewer children. I don't know the science on that one, but it's possible.
Second, it doesn't mean fewer people starving to death so much as it means more people (perhaps temporarily) not-starving to death-- and there's a difference. The whole point of an argument like the one the GP is making is, if you increase the food supply, the population increases to the point where people start starving to death again. If population growth is otherwise unchecked (e.g. by predators), then a population's numbers will grow until the available resources are not sufficient to support further growth. The two possibilities once that happens is (a) there will be some kind of equilibrium reached; or (b) the population will overuse the existing resources to the point where they basically exterminate themselves.
Which path do we want to take?
Re:Sashimi (Score:3, Insightful)
...make a super version of whatever Tuna eat.
Exactly. If the Tuna are bigger, and less prone to diseases, they will be eating more, and not dying as much from (normal non-human) predators. And on that note, what about the other animals that eat tuna? will they be strong enough to still kill the tuna they normally do, will they eat less, or start eating younger ones and sort of usurping this whole plan? Plus if they are bigger and stronger, they will likely linger in climate zones they would normally leave sooner, also (rather drastically, which is the key point) altering the natural sequence of migrations and predator V. prey.
I hope they have a rather lengthy trial in some giant pool before they release these into the wild.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:very dangerous practice (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, scarcity of food may possibly cause people (consciously or unconsciously) to have fewer children. I don't know the science on that one, but it's possible.
It doesn't. Look at the fertility rates in countries where starvation and famine aren't a problem (Western Europe, US, Japan). Then, compare that with the fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa.
The whole point of an argument like the one the GP is making is, if you increase the food supply, the population increases to the point where people start starving to death again.
So, you're saying that no matter how much (or little) food we produce, we'll always have people starving to death?
If you want mandatory population control, implement a one child policy like China, forced sterilization, or simply shoot the excess people in the head. But seriously, almost anything would be less cruel and cause less suffering than condemning someone to die of starvation.
Honestly, the argument the GP is making is that we should, by our inaction, allow some poor people in some far away country to starve to death. Those poor people consume far fewer of the earth's resources than the average American. If the GP really wants to make a difference and free up some resources, maybe he should start with himself.
Re:very dangerous practice (Score:4, Insightful)
What happens when they finish? (Score:2, Insightful)
Environmentalists: No.
Scientists: Please?
Environmentalists: Will it take over existing species?
Scientists: Yes but it will also make it easier/cheaper to feed the world population.
Environmentalists: No.
Conservation sounds like a good idea and all but how sweet would it be if the ocean was full of super salmon and super tuna that had the qualities mentioned here? If we created a super fish that was a source of food for these larger fish and also reproduced extra fast we could theoretically get so much more of our food from the ocean.
People are always mentioning pollution from livestock farming. I don't know if this is actually a significant factor in global warming type concerns, but it would be interesting to know how much greener we would be if we farmed super tuna instead of cattle.
Even if more than a few species of fish went extinct, I say it would be worth it.
Re:Cue that eco-maniacs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We 3 Tuna (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps you meant ethylene [wikipedia.org], a relatively harmless compound that is emitted by ripening fruit and stimulates nearby cells to ripen more quickly. This is why it's recommended to ripen certain fruits and vegetables in paper bags (e.g. avocados.)
Phosgene [wikipedia.org] is a chemical warfare agent from World War I. As sinister as some processed foods may be, I'm not sure they're to the point of using MWDs on our food yet...