News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Atomic Gardening. Parent comment

Re:Atomic Gardening by msandford on Sunday May 23, 2021 @08:08PM (#27259810)
I think the worry is that you get the biased against reproduction genes that make a lot of sense for a for profit GMO plant that hop to normal plants and reduce their ability to reproduce.

Not saying that's the concern just my impression.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Atomic Gardening by pfdietz on Sunday May 23, 2021 @08:44PM (#27260019)
If it reduced the plants' ability to reproduce, surely that would not spread in a population. So that seems no different from any other deleterious mutation. Such mutations happen all the time in any population.

Your argument there does apply to non-Mendelian inheritance ("gene drive"), so banning modifications to crops that would be engineered to cause that seems prudent (although I'm not sure why anyone would want to do that). Modifications to pests, on the other hand...

[ Parent | on HN ]