Re: [DIYbio] free food

Environments are what shape and define strains and species. It's
irrelevant if those traits are useful in other environments, because the
only environment we care about is agriculture, in particular the type of
agriculture in the type of climate we are interested in.

We are nature, so "what nature would select" is meaningless. When we
select, shape and edit, so does nature.

On 15/01/15 20:30, leaking pen wrote:
> I mean, the "bad dominants that get weeded out of a specific
> environment" could be the same dominants that allow it to thrive in
> another environment. that and, what WE select for in a crop not always
> tying in with what nature would select.
>
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 12:50 PM, Cathal Garvey
> <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me <mailto:cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me>> wrote:
>
> There's no objective measure of anything, ever. That said, if we
> call "selective pressure" an objective yardstick, then it's fair
> enough to say that the rule-of-thumb holds objectively; most stuff
> that results in a significant loss of "fitness" for an organism's
> environment or niche without a balancing advantage is either
> recessive, or weeded out within a few generations, so "most bad
> stuff is recessive".
>
> Agriculture is an environment. We might be intelligent actors
> (citation needed) but our selective pressures still weed out "bad
> stuff" for the niche we force crops to occupy and select for "good
> stuff". It may be "subjective" in the sense that it's a human
> applying selective pressure, but from a natural selection POV it's
> as meaningfully selective as anything else.
>
> And so: the things we value in crops are either fixed by selective
> pressure, or if they vary then they *may* be dominant or
> co-dominant, whereas the things we *dislike* in crops are *usually
> recessive*.
>
> ..leading into hybrids, hybrid vigour, and the
> unfortunate-to-some-__advantageous-to-others-but-__ultimately-a-side-effect
> property of hybrids that they do not breed true.
>
> On 15/01/15 19:43, leaking pen wrote:
>
> Good and Bad being completely subjective in this instance as well.
>
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 12:41 PM, Cathal Garvey
> <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me
> <mailto:cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me>
> <mailto:cathalgarvey@__cathalgarvey.me
> <mailto:cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me>>> wrote:
>
> Well, the results suggest the crops are generally a boon,
> particularly to economically marginalised farmers (plenty
> of data on
> India for eg), but I'll grant you that the marketers aren't
> exactly
> poster-children and I'm certainly not a fan of theirs.
>
> As far as Hybrids, it doesn't suit my aesthetics either to
> have a
> variety that doesn't breed true, but aesthetics be damned:
> it's a
> rule-of-thumb in genetics that where variation exists in a
> meaningful way, bad things are *usually* recessive, beneficial
> traits are *sometimes* dominant.
>
> That's simple Darwinism|Mendelianism; if bad things are
> dominant,
> there is more opportunity for the environment to act
> selectively on
> them, so they are weeded out faster and leave a pool of less
> damaging alleles, whereas if they are recessive, they can
> hide from
> selection for a generation or two and may contribute benefit in
> terms of unexpected side-effects, etcetera. So, bad traits
> that are
> dominant usually work on an organism after it has had a
> chance to
> breed successfully, which is OK in most agricultural contexts.
>
> Meanwhile, if things are beneficial, they tend to drift towards
> fixing in the population absent other pressures, until they hit
> equilibrium. If they are recessive, they'll reach some
> equilibrium
> with other alleles, if they are dominant they are more
> likely to
> simply become the norm, which means "variation doesn't
> exist in a
> meaningful way" and the rule-of-thumb ceases to apply.
> However, if
> only marginally beneficial on their own, beneficial
> dominant traits
> can take a long time getting to this point.
>
> Given that bad things are usually recessive and beneficial
> things
> are not always recessive, and given that breeding creates an
> artificial circumstance of near-total allelic fixation (for a
> defined subset of genes), it stands to reason why Hybrids
> are so
> popular: when you cross two pure-bred lines, the bad traits
> that
> limit those lines are usually recessive, and many of the
> good traits
> are either co-dominant or fully dominant.
>
> In other words, the F1 generation is often awesome. It's
> not called
> "carefully selected parental lineages vigour", it's called
> "hybrid
> vigour". The act of hybridising purebreds *often* or even
> *usually*
> results in very successful offspring.
>
> Now, there are two ways to look at this. One is to accept that
> hybrids are awesome and live with the fact that you can
> then only
> use them for one generation, because they're heterozygotes
> at most
> relevant loci. The other way is to look at this as
> inspiration: if
> it is clear which genes are valuable, then engineering a
> pure-bred
> line with those advantageous traits becomes the goal.
>
> Right now, we make one or two genetic changes, but with
> CRISPR and
> next-gen plant engineering, we could hypothetically be making
> "true-breeding hybrids". Hybrids aren't popular because
> manufacturers like DRM'd plants, they're popular because
> they're
> awesome. So, make them more awesome; make them breed true, and
> (some) farmers will use them.
>
>
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