This is oversimplifying in the opposite direction in my opinion. The important thing is not the letters, it's how they manifest -- the way they're interpreted as instructions. So the objection is to taking a paragraph of Ulysses and putting it into The Grapes of Wrath. Or even better, selecting a step from the middle of How to Build a Birdhouse and inserting it into the directions for crocheting a tea cozy.
If properly chosen, it could certainly have a beneficial effect. But DNA is also a much more complex system than a book.
> Gene's are letters in a story. To say "That's a salmon gene! It doesn't belong in my tomato!" is puzzling, like "That letter belongs to another book! Keep it out of this book!"
Using the same reasoning we could pick some pieces from an apple computer, mount it in a PC and expect that will fit in place and work flawlessly because, well... plastic is plastic. Right?.
It does not work like that. Organisms has been designed and polished for millions of years to work as a whole, all expensive useless stuff has been pruned for good reasons, and yes, this salmon gene -most probably- will not belong to a tomato... because is part of a salmon.
-> Organisms have been...
Since I share at least 60% of the DNA with about anything I eat I don't worry too much about mixing one organism with another genetically bad things can happen mixing close relatives or distant ones and I am not sure one poses a higher risk than the other.
Re:Atomic Gardening
by DominoTree on Sunday May 23, 2021 @02:35PM
(#27257378)
DNA is DNA, be it fragments or full genes, and regardless of the sequence, our bodies are pretty damn good at breaking down DNA we eat without directly incorporating it into our genomes.
Would be pretty interesting if that weren't the case though; quite literally "you are what you eat."
Anyway, good ol' paleo food was whatever nature provided, most of what was happy to kill you. Humans tamed 1000's of plants over 50,000 years changing them beyond recognition so they wouldn't hurt us with alkalis and poisons. And so the tasty bits were bigger and easier to get at. All by genetics.
Sure we can do it faster now. But we're aware of what we're doing. Grandparents with crossbred tomato didn't have any idea if she was reintroducing a poison or raising the acidity to dangerous levels. They were blundering in the dark.
I see no problem with turning on the light, and moving confidently.