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

Tuesday 17 Jan.

Tonight, on BBC2 TV at 9.30 pm GMT, and later online via the BBC iPlayer:

"Adam Rutherford meets the spider-goat, created by scientists and the product of a new field of research, Synthetic Biology"



I'm not sure I'll be able to watch this. Anyone who can, please let me know what it's like. (Can people outside the UK get the BBC iPlayer online?)



Jabs

No, I think not even Ireland can watch all on BBC iplayer. A spider goat? Sounds like scifi.

I saw it in the end. I really wish I hadn't.

Goats that give silk proteins in their milk - thus producing more silk than their interwoven spiders can?

The DNA code written into computer code and available to scientists over the internet?

Controlling parts of the body and parts of the brain?

Biological terrorism? (thru releasing billions of new viruses)

And more. Much more. Much much much more.

I was going to volunteer to watch for you if someone else hadn't, not a chore or anything, I was just going to bump something else to the w/e, now I am just interested in seeing what has you so spooked

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?q=spider+goat,+images&hl=en&lr=&sa=X&biw=1277&bih=624&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=78cFbiaUG1rWZM:&imgrefurl=http://www.whitenewsnow.com/healthy-families-gardens-preparedness/2486-you-can-grow-backyard-garden-6.html&docid=Rw-CunA6Uy_noM&imgurl=http://i719.photobucket.com/albums/ww193/ThisDayInHistory14/SpiderGoat.jpg&w=554&h=483&ei=f4oWT-PKPO7XiQLd1rSxDw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=1898&sig=114593318147650427833&page=1&tbnh=140&tbnw=161&start=0&ndsp=19&ved=1t:429,r:13,s:0&tx=93&ty=70

One can picture it in ones' minds' eye, with a picket sign or cartoon thought bubble over its head, reading, "I don't feel so good."

It reminds one of the eight legged long-horse Loki bred when he transformed himself into a mare in order to lure away the horse belonging to the Vanir architect who'd contracted to build the walls of Asgard, in order to make him late completing the task and deny him bonus money.

Subsequently, Odin, Thor ...(and Loki) took to riding the 8 legged long-horse themselves.


Myself, if I were conducting an effort like this for silk production, I'd enlist some creature at a more vegetative level for the purpose, possibly a sponge or a cotton tree.

Thanks Peanut. You might take a look at an earlier discussion on a very similar subject: http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/brunel/F2606954?thread=8288519 Jabs (still smilng, albeit thru gritted teeth perhaps!)

I watched it.

It was mind expanding.

The best way I can think of to describe it is this:

In 1978, Horizon did a programme called "Now the chips are down", about the coming revolution in microprocessors and their likely effect on industry and all our lives. It was a pretty negative portrayal, but it was famous and extremely timely - the microprocessor revolution came, and it did indeed transform all our lives.

Watching the programme last night, I had the feeling of being in a similar position to someone watching that in 1978 - the feeling that there are great things afoot, revolutionary things, things that are going to touch the lives of every single person in the country, if not the world. And that they'll change the way we all work and live. And that they're starting to happen right now, that even experts in the field are boggled at the rate of progress...

The spider-goats were, indeed, pretty amazing, but I was most impressed by the guy who'd diddled with the genetics of yeast to create an organism that turns sugar not into alcohol, but diesel. He's not digging fossil fuel out of the ground at huge expense - he's brewing it in a vat. The potential consequences for economics and the environment are literally mind-boggling.

I'm sure this show will be on again at some point.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/glowingpotato.cfm

we'll soon have a chip/french fry, that tells you when it's cooked

The final coup de grace in the programme was the reminder that all these created organisms were alive, and needed food for energy. And already large multinational corporations are buying up acres of land to provide the sugar to feed them, (e.g. the synthetic diesel people).

This will mean less food in the world for human beings - for those that are already starving. And for those animals whose habitats are destroyed.

But of course profit for the multinationals.

One habitat and one type of animal could really do with destroying - domestic cattle. As an efficient means of turning sunlight into food, they're *rubbish*. If we could wean the western world off its appetite for steak, we go a long way to making more actual food available to people.

Then again, people will insist on living in places where it's hard to grow food, and additionally will insist on breeding like rabbits. This is not the fault of multinationals.

Re: the synthetic diesel - if you grow food (= take carbon out of the atmosphere) today, feed it to your yeast tomorrow, and burn the resultant diesel the day after, the net effect on atmospheric carbon is close to zero, compared to digging crude oil out of the ground, transporting it thousands of miles, distilling and otherwise refining it, transporting it again and then burning it. It's a sustainable way of concentrating energy usefully. Civilisation NEEDS that, far more than it needs burgers. Focus on the right multinationals - the synthetic diesel is potentially a literally world-saving technology. Seeing people carping about it is... frustrating.

I've got to admit that recombinant DNA alterations that can escape into the natural world make me feel rather queasy and I'd personally consider it only sensible for safety and security reasons to design so that things which have been altered with recombinant DNA can survive only in cultivation.

Meanwhile, on sugar based diesel, the problem is similar to that of gasohol production, already a commonplace.

"Shell" gasoline, for example, is almost always part ethanol, and the stuff finds its way into other major brands in the form of cleaners added to the fuel.

A somewhat more radical approach would be to go to conversions from waste cellulose to ethanol or diesel, instead of using sugar.

The preliminary conversion from cellulose to sugar is something that many fungi do all the time.

Then one would be able to use the waste fiber from sugar beet* production, or sugar cane after the sugar and furfural are extracted, or for that matter, sawdust, as a base for synthetic fuel.




*Sugar Beets are also known as 'mangel wurzels'.

Not bad in vegetables Julienne, they tase like apples, fresh.

Lousy in a pie, they taste like cooked beets.

Ideal for a white borscht.

What struck me was the wide availability of the building blocks of new organisms. One of the scientists did a singularly unimpressive "demonstration", which seem to consist of merely mixing two colourless clear liquids in a tube. He (and the presenter) both seemed very smugly impressed with what they'd just done, but there was absolutely nothing on screen to indicate that he'd done anything more impressive than put tonic into gin.

On reflection, however, and comparing with the microprocessor revolution, the tools to do this stuff are getting exponentially cheaper and more available, in the same way computers did. And one of the things that happened when computers got cheap, easy to use and connected, was that people with time on their hands invented computer viruses.

It is not, I think, being overly alarmist to think about the possibility that in thirty years' time (maybe sooner) a teenage hacker with the right skillset and motivation could construct an *actual* virus using tools made available to the public for originally benevolent purposes.

Is this the way the world ends? Not with a bang, but with a ... wH1MP3r?

"large multinational corporations are buying up acres of land to provide the sugar to feed them, (e.g. the synthetic diesel people). This will mean less food in the world for human beings - for those that are already starving. And for those animals whose habitats are destroyed." [Jabberwock]

Would it be less of an outrage if the companies buying the land were small and local, rather than multinational? Just wondering. Considering the millions of tons of food that gets thrown away in the U.S. every year, it would seem more appropriate (to me, anyway) if the waste food could be used instead of the sugar for deisel-making. Then, at least, no acres would need to be planted with sugary crops.

"Then again, people will insist on living in places where it's hard to grow food, and additionally will insist on breeding like rabbits. This is not the fault of multinationals" [Hoovooloo]

Solutions to this have already been devised. Enter the thirty-story farm, ideal for urban sites. The food that is grown in these high-rise farms can easily and quickly be transported to the nearby people who will eat it.

As for people clustering in places where it's hard to grow food, I wonder if this is completely accurate. Many large cities sprang up near rivers or along the seacoast. This was a transportation matter, as travel on boats was (and still is) the most cost-efficient means of getting people and things from one place to another. One thing about river valleys is that they tend to be superior places for growing crops. Just think the Nile, that floods every Spring, bringing fresh nutrients to the fields that get flooded.

"Goats that give silk proteins in their milk" [Jabberwock]

This seems like an odd application of science, as spiders happily reproduce, and work for nothing as long as they have enough flies to eat. But maybe goat-milk silk is more convenient for mechanical applications. In any event, there are bacteria that produce insulin. I haven't heard any complaints about that. There are bacteria that can clear up spilled oil. Not many people worry about that.

I have mixed feelings about the proposal that cattle be minimized as a source of food. They happily eat grass, which is something that humans can't and won't eat. In eating that grass, they incorporate into their bodies and their milk some of the necessary Omega oils that are in short supply in many human diets.

I would rather drink cows' milk than soy milk.

Look at a spider.

Now look at a goat.

Which of those things looks easier to milk, to you?

Also, yes, cows happily eat grass. Except:

(a) you could grow something other than grass on the enormous acres most cows get grazed on and
(b) realistically nowadays most farmed cattle get fed a good deal of stuff that isn't grass - growth hormones, antibiotics and similar.

One interesting possibility raised by the programme was genetically engineered meat grown in a vat that had never been part of a complete organism. No scientific principle prevents this from being achieved. All the omega oils you could want, only it's never had to graze or be slaughtered.

Which further begs the question: is it kosher/halal? Lab grown bacon would be, to every chemical and physical test imaginable, indistinguishable from the real thing, but it would never have been part of an actual pig. Is it therefore still unclean, or not? (To which my response is - who cares? If a deluded nutter with an imaginary friend wants to swear off bacon, all the more for me.)

"Also, yes, cows happily eat grass. Except:
(a) you could grow something other than grass on the enormous acres most cows get grazed on and
(b) realistically nowadays most farmed cattle get fed a good deal of stuff that isn't grass - growth hormones, antibiotics and similar." [Hoovooloo]

(a.) depends on a lot of different things. Some soil is poor enough that grass is about all that will grow on it. Other soils will support other crops. I'm a bit partial to the idea that we should just let grasslands be what they are, whether something is grazing on them or not. Grass is the hands-down winner when it comes to building up an areas's soil. Forested lands will build the soil up, too, but it takes a lot longer. I'm of the "Don't push the river,it flows by itself" philosophy myself. Of course, cows are not the only grass-eating creatures. Sheep and goats can be [and are] used for consumption, and they also give milk. Buffalo are another possibility, and they don't seem to harm the grasslands by overgrazing. Or so I've been told....

(b.) I totally agree. If cows have to eat soybeans and grains in order to grow large enough for slaughter, something is wrong with the equation. Just my opinion.

Any area you can graze cows on you could keep chickens on, and chicken meat is better for you, they lay eggs, and they don't belch greenhouse gases. Sheep and goats are better too, and they give wool as well as milk. Cattle are almost the worst animal to husband in terms of global sustainability, regardless of how well applicable they are to certain limited areas.

Sources of relevance:

http://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/1515/collapse

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1715324/

Chicken ranching was apparently the next step in the societal collapse on Easter Island after the war between the short-ears and the long-ears.

Though it staved off starvation for a time, it wasn't enough to save that island culture in the long run.

Apparently, what forced the collapse was loss of the marine birds nesting areas to egg hunters and the introduced Polynesian rat, since without the marine birds, there was no mechanism for replenishing the fertility of the soil.