Museum of Engineered Organisms Opens In Pittsburgh 54
qeorqe writes "The Center for PostNatural History is a museum and research library about organisms that have been created either by genetic engineering or selective breeding. Included in the collection are Sea Monkeys and GloFish. From the article: 'One of the cool things about natural history museums is that they show you how nature has changed over time, adapting to volatile conditions and extreme challenges. And nothing is more volatile, extreme, or challenging than the human race, so it makes sense that there would be a museum to chronicle just how much we’ve messed with plants, animals, the climate, and in general the world around us. The Center for PostNatural History, opening this week in Pittsburgh, is that museum.'"
Re:Zoo not museum (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, GloFish and Sea Monkeys are neat and all, but genetically speaking pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. You can find plenty of genetic changes in the produce aisle. Corn from tesointe, wheat with chromosomes from 3 other species, tetraploid potatoes (that won't make you sick), hybrid octaploid strawberries, all kinds of different shapes and colors of squash, eggplant, & tomatoes, seedless citrus, grapes, watermelons, & bananas, stonefruit hybrids, large sweet apples and other fruits bred away from their small sour ancestors, every single brassica, a rainbow of carrots, different speckled beans, and many others, and all the mutations behind these traits, including the less visible ones like altered photoperiod and disease resistance, would be good topics, each with their own history. Oh, and every breed of dog, chicken, cow, ect. I would hope they include these along with the newer genetic engineering examples like GloFish, Bt & HR crops, ect.. I don't think enough people appreciate, or are even aware, of the genetic history of their food and the genetic changes that occurred over the years, or even the changes being made today. I think it'd be kind of neat if they also included some oddities that you don't typically hear of, like white blackberries, pink blueberries, red & pink fleshed apples, citranges, shipova, ect,
I wonder if the concession stand takes the same theme, selling fruits and vegetables along with a little bit on their genetic changes. Triploid apples, papayas with papaya ringspot virus genes, nachos made from corn with the Bt gene...too bad there's no more Flavr Savr tomatoes but they can still use ones with broken lycopene biosynthesis pathways like Huge Lemon Oxheart or White Tomesol, or maybe source a nice dark one like Indigo Rose.
Interview with Curator (Score:4, Informative)