h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

prince charles also talks to plants, cheats on the 'world's most beautiful woman' and is generally acknowledged to be an inbred loony who tends to stick his nose into places where royals should not. perhaps a more authoritative figure could have been chosen.

p.s. gm foods do not necessarily contain genes from other plants, e.g. they can be modified to downregulate certain enzymes, such as polygalactourinase in tomatoes which regulates ripening. it concerns me when someone is warning others of the dangers of something when they do not fully understand what they are talking about.

I agree, I don't think this article is very (or at all) balanced.

There is no mention that GM crops might actually be a good idea, wacky I know, but this is just as much a possibilty as them wiping out life as we know it.

Genetically modifying them and then making them sterile so farmers have to buy new seed each year from ZenecaAgrochem or whoever, now that's a reasonable argument, this puts these companies in a possible position of incredible power - governments could potentially be held to ransom - no help on a certain policy, food prices go up astronomically...
Why do you never hear the real arguments against GM food, only the rather ludicrous scaremongering of the popular press?

Yeah, I agree that the 'terminator gene' is wrong. It is also another example of science being PR and media illiterate. Unfortunately the media is science illiterate, I think that's where this big mess has come from. The two clash and let the extremists hijack the whole damn arguement.

GM crops have huge potential. Imagine crops with in-built insecticide that only kills the target pest (not every insect in a field). crops with huge yields. Crops that stay fresher for longer and taste better.

In my department at work, Rothamsted Experimental Station, there was a project funded my the Jersey Potato Society (or something like that) that was developing GM spuds that were resistant to the Potato Cyst Nematode, an enormously problematic pest. Due to the media furore this was cancelled, people lost their jobs, potatos are still being attacked in fields and years of work was wasted.

In my opinion the potential of GM crops far outwiegh the dangers (especially since the dangers are so infinitessimly small). I read a paper last year on the potential impact of GM genes (or alleles) 'escaping' into the environment (i forget the reference). The conclusion basically stated that little to no harm would be done, as there is no reason that these new alleles would have any selective advantage, hence would not spread via genetic drift through the gene pool. If anything, the affected crops would more likely be at a selective disadvantage.

Just remember, we're modifying crops that we have already modified for thousands of years.

Couldn't have put that better myself Ste .

People who worry about the genes getting into our own should also be told that around 95% of our genome contains "junk" DNA. This "junk" DNA in fact contains many defunct but still possibly readable basterial and viral DNA etc...

I remember hearing an old bloke on Radio 5 a while back saying that he remembered what potatoes and suvh like had been like 50 years ago and he was of the opinion that crops have been genetically modified for years anyway - how true!

If foriegn DNA was that easy to get into our own genome then we'd be able to cure a whole string of diseases, including cancer probably. hehehe. People who worry about that sort of thing are beyond hope anyway .

Yeah, crops, farm animals, pets etc. are all products of human genetic manipulation. Wheat for example is a fusion of three different wild ancestral species.

Hey Ste, I'm one of the h2g2 ACE's (Assistant Community Editor) and we go around welcoming newcomers to the site - we're the official nice guys of h2g2 . We can't give you a cheery haloo though unless you put something on your homepage (unless we bump into like this of course ). I've noticed you've been joining in quite a bit by the number of conversations you seem to be having so why not put something on your homepage and people can come and chat to you on your space - it doesn't have to be much, anything at all would do.

Anyway, for what its worth.

Hi and Welcome to h2g2, hope you stick around

Oooo, I didn't realise I was speaking to someone so high up in the chain of command ;¬), hehehe

Thanks for the welcome, I think I will put something on my homepage, but what sort of thing do you put there? Stuff about yourself?, an article of sorts? I've been thinking about submitting some genetics articles (DNA fingerprinting/sequencing or something like that).

I looked about h2g2 a while ago, then it went away to go on the bbc server. This time I decided to get more involved than a conversation about chocolate malteser ice cream.

:¬)

Put what you want on it, some tell all about themselves whereas others put virtually nothing, just click on people's homepages and see.

Hang on....

*runs back to his homepage*

....comes back http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A543791

That's a link to a help page I knocked up, have a look if you're interested.

Articles like that will be very welcome in my book, I think this place concentrates far too much on Physics in terms of science articles. I myself am trying to rectify that, I've got an article on Bacterial Drug resistance in Peer review at the moment, trouble is, loads of the scouts said how wonderful it was when it was first posted there but none have reccomended there, so its now gathering dust and mould

I always offer those I welcome a and by the way. Help yourself

Bacterial drug resistance? I've studied quite a bit about that in the past, shall I take a look at it?

I've started writing an article on the Human Genome Project. What is the process on getting it peer reviewed/edited/whatever the hell goes on to it? it aint going to be a whimsical and opinionated thing you usally get, like this article we were once discussing

ta *munch* (must learn guideml)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F48874?thread=108187&skip=0&show=20 Is the Peer Review thread for my article. I'd be very grateful if you read it and commented, especially if you know something about it, there's no better criticism than informed criticism! :-) I can help with GuideML if you like, there's a link to the GuideML clinic from the help page but I can just give you an idea if you like, its really simple, especially the approved GuideML (some of the fancier stuff is not approved for guide entries). The Human genome project was on my list of topics to write an article on, but I didn't have a whole lot of enthusiasm as I'm no geneticist so I wouldn't have been as confident on that subject, so go for it. I look forward to reading it. To post to Peer review, have a look at the main page and just follow the instructions (The main page should be easy to find from the link above). The instructions are important to follow because if you don't the Scouts will just kick it into the 'Sin bin'. Basically the article should be finshed as far as you're concerned and the subject line in the conversation shoulf be "A123456 - The Human Genome Project". The first line of the posting should then be the url link to the article... Peer review was started last August as there were too many articles for the main editors to get through on their own so they decided that we researchers should decide what gets into the guide and the volunteer group the Scouts was formed. The above article was written a long time before Peer Review and I personally would hang it out to dry if someone posted this onto Peer review, I'm actually considering contacting one of the PTB about this article as it doesn't fit one of the Guide's criteria for articles - namely balance. If you want to see another one that concerns me (and this is worse...) got to http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A182765 Bye for now, Orcus

I looked at your article, which i though was excellent. i couldn't really add any more than has already been said in the discussion.

i also looked at the guideml help page, it does seem dead simple, i'm writing my article in word at the mo, it wont be too hard to transfer it over afterwards.

my hgp article is coming along well, im enjoying trying to make it easy for the layman, although it is a challenging task sometimes. it sounds tough to try and get an entry edited, i'll give it a go. i was suprised that noone has already written an article about the hgp, hopefully it'll get prioritised, hehehe, yeah right.

cheers

Oh, you can just post a supporting comment on peer review...it helps to bump back up to the top of the queue and the further attention of the scouts....

Not sure Word is a good idea, I think that will do funny things to the text when you paste it in as its got extra formatting characters (much like html). I use notepad myself as its text only.

Oh, and thanks for the compliment..

i plan to save it as a .txt file, the same format as notepad, so it doesnt make much difference in the end...

ill post a comment in the peer review later then

Thanks

i've put an early version of my human genome project entry up. want to see?

goto my page. if you want...

Hello.

*dusts forum down*

I'll go and have a look.