chadn737

You're arguments are based on unsupported speculation and stereotypical anti-corporatism. Not once have you provided any evidence for any claim, despite many papers showing the exact opposite. Support your claims or retract. You simply claim that they are "empty upon inspection"....that is an unsupported claim. Having provided the sources and shown that they support the conclusion that GMOs are not dangerous, you have an intellectual obligation to either explain why the sources provided do not support the conclusion that GMOs are safe or you could be honest that you have not bothered to read them and are just making stuff up. I can tell you that your claims are completely unsupported because you have not provide one damn piece of evidence to support anything. You just throw out speculations and demand everyone accept you at your word. What expertise do you have that we should believe you? I will gladly pit mine against yours, so at the end of the day, the only real basis we have for any claim is the actual research. I have provided countless papers, you have provided none. That makes your claims unsupported and unacceptable by scientific standards. Maybe that sort of nonsense carries traction with the type of people who buy magnet therapy bracelets, but in science it is unacceptable. Kettle meet pot. Only difference is that I actually support my claims with verifiable research and at the end of the day, that is all that matters. They do contradict your claims. Take the claim that we don't know the effects of GMOs on honey bees. I posted papers from the 2000s, from the 1990s, and papers on the effects of BT from the 80s. That completely proves you wrong. If you disagree, then you have an intellectual obligation to explain yourself, to explain why the data is wrong and provide data to the contrary. You can't just wave your hands and say they mean nothing. Your magical powers to make published research disappear on a whim doesn't work here overtone. I don't know what post you are talking about and thus have no idea if I have read it or not. We can see the aspects of climate change denial that I listed above in your own posts: 1) Denial/rejection of data and research....check 2) Rejection of scientific consensus.....check 3) Rejection of position of major scientific bodies and organizations.....check 4) Making it a political issue....just see some of your comments regarding GMOs in South Africa...check 5) Is a consequence, so we'll skip it 6) Conspiracy theories.....see all your comments on Monsanto and politics....check 7) Profiting off of your position....I have no idea, so no 8) Fear/ideology driven positions....check Thats 6 out of 8....

I would suggest: "heritable variation through mitosis or meiosis that cannot be attributed to underlying genetic variation". The dictionary definition confuses gene-expression with epigenetics. The two are not synonymous. Gene-expression changes can occur due to signaling and other factors and are not inherited. This is simply differential gene expression. Epigenetic effects typically affect gene expression, but are not limited to them nor is gene expression limited to epigenetics. Unfortunately, a lot of people, even biologists who know better get this confused. For example, prions, which affect phenotype through misfolding of proteins can be epigenetic and do not change gene expression.

The problem can and has been modeled, the complexity of the model depending upon the assumptions one makes regarding the population and the nature of the mutation. The simplest cases are probably those that were first investigated by Fisher back in the 1920s. However, I think the work of Ken-ichi Kojima is more what you are looking for. Unfortunately, there is no simple equation and each case has to be modeled individually, each giving a probability of survival for a given generation.

Which dictionary? I'd be very interested because it is wrong. "External" should not be part of the definition. The original definition put forth by Waddington was before it was proven that DNA was the genetic material. He used it in reference as a "landscape" along which different paths could be taken to describe how genes could interact and to produce the phenotypes. It was very much a developmental theory. An important aspect of the definition, however, has always been its heritability through either meiosis or mitosis. This is also essential to the original developmental aspect of the definition because once a cell-type had determined its fate, it would pass on those traits to its daughter cells, even though genetically a heart cell is identical to a neuron. This definition therefore referred to a higher level of heritability. Later, when it was identified that certain traits were heritable through meiosis in certain species, despite no known genetic differences, the definition became more about transgenerational inheritance. Several molecular mechanisms of epigenetic heritability are known, the two most prominent being DNA methylation and histone modification. Unfortunately, a lot of scientists outside of epigenetics confuse the mechanism as the phenomena of epigenetics itself. This is incorrect. DNA methylation and histone modifications can change dynamically in a cell and are not always inherited through mitosis and in animals very very rarely through meiosis. As heritability is key to the definition of epigenetics, non-heritable changes are not epigenetic. Because the environment can sometimes induce alterations of DNA methylation and histone modifications, many outside of epigenetics began to confuse the term to refer to any environmental interaction with the genome. However, that is simply a gene x environment interaction, something that has been known long before the term epigenetics was even coined. It is possible that such environmentally induced changes can be inherited, but very few examples have ever been conclusively demonstrated. Many true epigenetic variants, most of which are known in plants, are not environmentally induced at all, but due to random pertubations....similar to a mutation, hence why we call them epimutations. Sorry to get off track, but the term epigenetics has become a buzz word leading to widespread abuse, especially amongst scientists who should know better.

This is a complex question. The plant can't distinguish between nitrogen fixed by rhizobacteria or applied nitrogen. Its going to take up both. The real issue is whether or not at the end of the day more nitrogen has been left in the soil than removed. I am not familiar with any research on applied nitrogen with clover, but there is quite a bit that has been done with soybean, another legume. One thing that has been learned is that applied nitrogen oftentimes inhibits nitrogen fixation. The act of developing rhizobia and forming the symbiotic relationship with the rhizobacteria costs the plant energy...considerable energy. In the presence of a high nitrogen environment, it is more energy efficient for the plant to simply obtain its nitrogen from the soil than to invest energy into the rhizobia. So there is a tradeoff in the fixation. However, these sorts of results come from soybean fields, where soybeans are the only crop. Planting your clover next to a tree, you now have a non-legume in the mix consuming nitrogen as well. This may offset the situation. Quite simply I have no simple answer for you.

There are 4 "letters" in the DNA alphabet. Mutations do not create a 5th "letter". It duplicates letters, deletes letters, converts letters. If you start with only one of each of the 26 letters of the alphabet you will never be able to write a sentence or word that requires more than one of the same letter. Words like "hello" can only be written by duplicating the letter "L". Such duplications would be considered a "mutation" if we want to continue with this analogy.

Recombination is not considered an evolutionary force for a very simple reason: it doesn't change allele frequencies in and of itself. Under Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium, recombination is more or less assumed with the requirement of random mating. If the conditions of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium are met within a population, or at least approximately so, then there will be little to no change in allele frequencies. In other words, very little evolution going on, regardless of recombination. We can also view it another way. In inbred populations that are largely homozygous, the molecular process of recombination still occurs, but it has very little effect because you are creating the same combination every time by recombining homozygous genes. In contrast, mutation immediately changes the allele frequency and is the original source of genetic variation in a population. That is why mutation is considered an evolutionary force, while recombination is not.

I don't think you really understand how recombination works. Recombination acts to move shuffle around the standing variation within a population, but it does not produce that variation to begin with...unless of course there is an error during recombination, also known as a "mutation." Without that standing variation, recombination will not produce any new combinations of alleles. Consider an inbred line. Many plant species self-pollinate, leading to inbred accessions that are almost genetically homogenous. Recombination still goes on during meiosis, but since their is limited genetic variation, that recombination does not produce new combinations. In the absence of genetic variation, recombination have limited effect. So where does the genetic variation that recombination works with come from? Unless you believe that populations of species simply popped into existence out of nothing with the full-breadth of genetic variation found in that population, then there must be some other source of said genetic variation. The source of that genetic variation is mutation. If you look at evolution over the span of only a few generations, yes, recombination is going to play a bigger role. The reason for that is that the population you are studying already has standing genetic variation (thanks to previous mutations) and the mutation rates are probably low enough that over the span of only a few generations, not much new variation is going to arise. However, over the course of many generations and over the course of evolutionary time, the ultimate source of all variation is mutation. Start with the 26 letters and only "26" letters....meaning you have only 26 letters that can be used once. How much do you think you can actually write? A single word like "hello" cannot be written with just the 26 letters because there are two "L"s in hello and you only have one "L" in your 26 letters. In order to write "hello", you need to somehow duplicate the letter "L". A duplication like that is a mutation. Now with two "L"s its possible for recombination to not only write "hello", but also "mellow", and "yellow". Without that mutation producing a second "L" recombination will never write any of those words or any word that requires two "L"s.

I know you said "implicit". I made the point of emphasizing how "explicit" Darwin was because Darwin realized how ground shaking universal common descent was. And having read Wallace's 1858 essay as well, I am not convinced that this one line shows that the concept of universal common descent was implicit. In my last post I stated that common ancestry is a given in evolution, but that does not mean that there is a universal common ancestor implicit in the idea of evolution. There are many creationist/intelligent design advocates who argue for limited speciation within certain lineages and against universal common descent. It is impossible to tell from his 1858 essay whether or not Wallace was implying descent in this fashion or of the grander universal common descent that Darwin advocated. I do not mean to lessen Wallace's contributions, but there are reasons why we give more credit to the likes of Darwin, and this is a major reason. And I am free to write as I wish and qualifying an absolute really is not distracting. Nitpicking of English at this level is really about trying to score points.

1) Darwin was explicit about universal common descent. The only figure/illustration in the Origin is one of the very first phylogenetic trees ever drawn. While Wallace's theory of natural selection would obviously have assumed some limited common ancestry...after all, there is no such thing as evolution without common ancestry...the idea of "universal common descent" to my knowledge is not. If you think otherwise, then please point me to the works where Wallace spells out this concept of universal common descent. The two theories of Natural Selection also differed in subtle, yet profound ways. Some have even argued that Wallace's origin concept was more one of group selection rather than individual selection. 2) It is very unique. New genes and new variants arise through mutation. Without mutation there is no variation to recombine into better combinations. While most of evolution in sexually reproducing organisms will operate upon standing variation over the short term, over the length of evolutionary history, mutation is the source of that variation.

1) "epigenetic" does not mean "the environment" or "caused by the environment". 2) We know that the environment does not cause specific mutations because we know that many, perhaps most mutations are either neutral or slightly deleterious in their effects. If the environment were inducing specific mutations and adaptations then we would expect a bias towards beneficial mutations. 3) We have identified the primary mechanisms by which mutations are induced and in thousands of mutation experiments in many different organisms, we know that these mutations are not determinative.

Water tupelo does produce pneumatophores, they are just less prominent and typically only under chronic flooding. Furthermore, water tupelo also produces extensive aerenchyma tissue. Many of these adaptations are induced.

Oxygen is critical for roots and plants have evolved specialized mechanisms to cope with this. See my continued mention of aerenchyma. As for there being "nearly nothing" that is false. While certainly lower than the atmosphere, its more than adequate under normal conditions in most environments. For one, depending on soil type, there is actually a lot of pores through the soil that are not visible to the eye and there is a constant diffusion of gasses between the soil and the atmosphere.

While true, plant cells will only survive for so long under anaerobic conditions. During flooding, roots will respond through anaerobic metabolism for some time, but unless longer term solutions are induced, such as the development of aerenchyma, they will die. Even species that are capable of limited induction of aerenchyma, like maize, will die under prolonged flooding stress due to hypoxia. And of course, the soil is rarely hypoxic for long unless under prolonged flooding, which means that in most environments, the roots have access to oxygen. Those roots still require oxygen. Cypress trees, for example, have extensive aerenchyma tissue. They also develop specialized root structures called pneumatophores (the knees that stick above the water) that further enable gas exchange. They have especially shallow roots which are closer to the surface to further enable more efficient gas exchange.

Who are these "key employees hired from Monsanto"? Name them and provide evidence for it. Searching the CSIR's own website produces no such information and I am challenging you here and now to back up this claim or retract it. This is poisoning the well and unsupported at that.

No link? I linked you to the very papers themselves. The evidence is right there. At this point I have lost count of how many papers and studies I have linked you too....to claim the opposite is an outright lie and I am calling you out on it. All it takes is reading them to know that they are essentially duplications and use the same methodology and techniques. What you have just proven is that you have not bothered to read the research, but yet dismiss it anyhow and reassert claims that you have not once provided a shred of evidence for.

For every challenge you have posed about GMOs I have provided countless sources showing the exact opposite. At some point, for your continued cries of risk and danger you have to provide credible evidence to the contrary of these numerous studies that demonstrate said danger. You can't simply assume it. That's not how science works. You do not get to advance claims based on your unsupported assertions. The fact that all the data shows the opposite addresses the issues and shows proves you wrong. You have made numerous unsupported claims, such as your unsupported claim that transgenes are more likely to be horizontally transferred than non-transgenes. You have an intellectual obligation to support such claims. To deny the facts in light of evidence is the same thing that is done by Climate Change Deniers. There are many parallels: Climate Change Denial vs Anti-GMO Activism Similarities: 1) Abundance of data for Climate Change.......abundance of data for advantages and safety of GMOs 2) Scientific consensus for Climate Change......scientific consensus for advantages and safety of GMOs 3) Major scientific organizations (National Acadamies, AAAS, etc, etc) have taken a position that Climate Change is happening......same major scientific organizations have taken a position that GMOs are safe and advantageous 4) Climate Change Denial is first and foremost a political position....Anti-GMO activism is first and foremost a political position 5) Climate Change Denial puts lives at risk.....Anti-GMO activism puts lives at risk (rejection of Golden Rice, virus resistant cassava, etc) 6) Climate Change Denial is laden with conspiracy theories......Anti-GMO activism is laden with conspiracy theories 7) People profit off of peddling Climate Change Denial.....people profit off of Anti-GMO activism 8) Climate Change Denial is fear/ideology driven.....Anti-GMO activism is fear/ideology driven The list goes on...essentially both amount to a substitution of fear/ideology and conspiracy theories for science and fact-based logic.

If you start with a homozygous mutant before doing the second mutagenesis, then yes.

All plant cells do and we are talking about plants.

Root cells need oxygen, just as any cell does. In evolutionary terms, you need to remember that plants evolved with their habitat. If oxygen is available in sufficient amounts in the soil, which normally it is, then there is no selective pressure for some other means of supplying oxygen. If you look at species that often must survive under low oxygen conditions (most often due to flooding), such as water lilies, there are specialized adaptations to supply oxygen to the roots. One of these adaptations are the development of aerenchyma. Essentially these are parenchymal tissues, the bulk tissue type of the plant, that have more air pockets between cells than normal. This does allow the movement of oxygen from above ground tissue to the roots. In some species, which experience only periodic flooding and low oxygen conditions, the development of aerenchyma can be induced. There are also other more specialized adaptations, as well as biochemical ones.

I'm all for a reduced meat diet, particularly for environmental reasons. The biology of a human, however, is one of an omnivorous diet and meat is one of the most nutritionally packed foods available, including many essential nutrients that are hard to obtain through purely vegetarian (especially vegan) means. Raising of lifestock on grasslands is a great way to produce food from marginal land at high risk of damage by cultivation. Health wise, as with anything...simply eat in moderation.

I have a problem with the seeming assumption that "unprocessed" is necessarily better than "processed" in any context. First off, the processing differs from food to food. Sausage is not processed in the same way that a chicken nugget is. The two are not necessarily comparable in health effects simply because they are "processed". The same is true of processed vegetables. Secondly, its an assumption based on the Appeal to Nature fallacy. Unfortunately, these studies are conducted on Western populations where there is an obesity epidemic due to reduced physical activity and increased calorie consumption. This directly correlates to the consumption of processed foods because of their cheapness and convenience. Seeking to blame particular foods or processing for health effects is largely an attempt to shift responsibility for health effects. Healthier living can be accomplished through what we have long known; eating in moderation and being more physically active.

EDIT: Many of the issue surrounding GMOs are discussed in this extensive book from the National Academies of Science: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12804&page=R13 You are using classic fear mongering tactics. Even though we had studies on the effects of Bt going back to the 1980s, plus many more dealing with GMOs before their release, you claim that we did not know. That subsequent studies have only verified these earlier reports show that we actually did know and that those previous studies were correct. Its a classic fear mongering tactic to try and falsely lead people to believe that "there is not enough research" or that "the research is inadequate" or that "we just don't know". This is the fallacy known as an "argument from ignorance." These later studies prove that the earlier studies were in fact adequate and correct. The only reason we continue to need or fund these new studies is because anti-GMO advocates continue to make these claims and scare an ignorant public, thus forcing scientists to continually repeat themselves. Its exactly like the global warming debate. We know the Earth is warming, we know this is being driven by anthropogenic causes, yet global warming deniars continue to argue to the contrary making the exact same claims that "we don't know" or "the research is inadequate", etc...this has the cause of making us continually have to revisit the issue. Its settled, we know that GMOs are not the cause of colony collapse. Except that we have studies published in the early 90s (which means the research was conducted much earlier) at the same time when these crops were being developed. These showed no effect and there is absolutely no sensible reason why spray on Bt would have less an effect than GMO Bt. Spray on Bt is applied non-discriminately, meaning it will fall on whatever plant is pollinated by Bees. Furthermore, it is used in non-GMO crops, like fruits and vegetables where honey bees are especially active and used. Contrast that to Cotton and Maize fields, which are not pollinated by bees commercially and would not be a source of pollen for these collapsing colonies. If anything, spray on Bt would have a far more damaging effect, than GMOs. Yes, they are duplicating their prior efforts. Some of this research is essentially duplications of earlier research. After all, do to the unfounded fear mongering tactics of anti-GMO activists, there is continued concern and pressure from an ignorant public. So we continue to duplicate efforts to prove the same thing over and over again. Its just like the global warming debate. Deniers continue to challenge sound science, forcing a stand still in research. This is again fear mongering. You present no evidence to the contrary, no scientific basis for any of your claims. Despite all the research I presented, which there is much more, you simply make vague unsubstantiated claims that suggest we have no clue what is going on. That is false and is nothing more than fear mongering. Such unsubstantiated claims have no place in science or scientific debates. I challenge you to support your claims or retract them. False. Soybeans are the typical crop grown in rotation with corn. When farmers take marginal lands out of reserve...meaning lands that were not being used for commodity crop production and place them into corn production, due to high ethanol demand, they are most likely to use a corn/soybean rotation. The reason for this is to break disease cycles, reduce nitrogen requirements, etc. There is another driving force behind this as well. With the ethanol boom, corn on corn production increased, primarily in high-quality areas, like central Iowa and Illinois. This had the effect of also driving up soybean prices, thus making soybeans also attractive for production. The result being that the conversion of marginal land to crop production, whether corn or soybean has been driven by the ethanol boom. This conversion of marginal lands has only happened in the last few years with high commodity prices. Through the mid-90s and early 2000s, when commodity prices were low, many farmers placed land under conservation reserve peaking in 2008...about the time the ethanol boom started taking off. However, we have had Roundup Ready soybeans for well over a decade at this point. So if GMOs were the driving cause....why did CRP acreage continue to increase throughout that decade and decrease only in 2008 when prices started to increase? Hmmm...logic and basic common sense says that your argument is wrong. Once again, I refer you back to my previous sources that clearly show that the driving cause is ethanol. Because the risk is the same. Once integrated into the genome, that transgene is no more likely to spread than any other "native" gene in the plant. So when hybridization of non-GMO sugarbeets with weedy cousins created one of the worst weeds in sugarbeet fields the risk of such gene flow for those traits was no less than that of a transgenic trait. That's complete bullshit. The risk of gene flow from GMOs has been extensively studied, far more so than gene flow from traditional breeding, which has produced far more effects than any GMOs. A simple google search for such studies produces thousands of results. So don't tell me that it has not been evaluated. Again false...these risks have actually been assessed, which if you bothered to do a simple Google Scholar search before claiming there is no research, you would know. Heres a few examples (from many): 1) Risks from GMOs due to Horizontal Gene Transfer 2) A review of numerous studies: Horizontal gene transfer as a biosafety issue: A natural phenomenon of public concern 3) Microbial horizontal gene transfer and the DNA release from transgenic crop plants 4) And another review: Horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes from transgenic plants to bacteria What we have learned here is that 1) such research is not beyond our capability, 2) the studies have been done, 3) the risk is very low, 4) you are wrong, and 5) you did not bother to research your claims before making them. This is false, proven false by the numerous studies I have presented and also yet another classic case of fear mongering. Actually it is a stretch. There no known way that horizontal transfer would be more likely to occur nor any reason to suspect as much. Furthermore, numerous studies suggest just the opposite, that it is unlikely to occur. This is yet more unsubstantiated claims. I challenge you to support that it is more likely with scientific evidence or retract such claims. Oooo.....SCARY!!!!!!! Yet again, more fear mongering language in the absence of any verifiable facts.

Look at the LacZ activity and then think about how the various deletions overlap and the corresponding effect on LacZ activity. If LacZ activity decreases, then that suggests what? If LacZ activity increases, then that suggests what? I'm being deliberately vague because this sounds like homework and you need to do it yourself.

You quote mine wikipedia's reference to the "needs of industry" but do not bother to understand what that means. In my time at the CSIR, much of the research there was "industrial", by which I mean things like materials science, mining operations, etc...i.e. trying to make South Africa into an advanced industrial nation. There is only one major lab at the CSIR that works on GMOs and that is Dr. Chikwamba's lab, which at the time had no industry connections, but many philanthropic connections, such as the Gate's Foundation where they were improving vitamin A content in crops like sorghum and maize. No mention of the CSIR is made in either one of those new reports...one of which is only reporting on a new guy taking over leadership of Monsanto in SA, the other actually about Monsanto's work in economic development primarily in Tanzania! You can't go around making unsupported claims about non-existent connections. we can ask this: And we can answer that with a very simple "No". Every transgenic product undergoes independent evaluation...in the US this is done by 3 different agencies. It is done independently in Europe, in Japan, and in South Africa where it also undergoes an extensive evaluation process. This is done independently for each and every event....even those that contain the same transgene. So we can answer your skepticism with a "No". You could find this out for yourself with a simple google search of something like "south africa gmo approval process" rather than continually making these unsupported suggestions that are meant to instill fear. we can look forward to interesting and informative posts about "the policies of that country, its research, and current status", rather than this: We could see informed commentary on South African events such as this one, for example:http://www.acbio.org...of-south-africa Note that the legal requirements for establishing the claims of Monsanto's advertising were not strict - nothing like what would be necessary to establish a scientific finding, merely amounting to finding an expert witness with a concurrent opinion - and the claims the court found "unsubstantiated" are quite similar to several of those made by the general run of GMO promulgators here and everywhere. This is your response? To reference a case where an activist group got Monsanto's advertising silenced? This says nothing about the actual regulation, safety, or use of GMOs in South Africa. First off, the claims that GMOs are able to produce more on less and improve environmental conditions is documented and supported by independent experts and evaluations. Secondly, you are using an obviously biased source, seeing as the African Center for Biosafety is an activist group whose sole purpose is to campaign against GMOs and other such technologies. Furthermore, after extensive google searching, including searching the Advertising Standards Authority own website I have found no mention of this case except in reference to The ACB's own claims. Furthermore, the more you search, you find similar vague references from many different years, all of it coming from one source with no independent verification. So I challenge the fact that this actually happened or that Monsanto responded in this way.