Genomics data could make steaks more tender

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 DNA analyses may help select the best breeds by predicting how beef will taste once it reaches our palate, according to Sergio Pistoi.

Using state-of-the art genomics to predict whether a piece of beef will be tender enough may sound excessive. Until now, the meat industry has been using low-tech methods to assess beef quality, based on carcass weight, hanging method and pattern of muscle fat stripes, also known as marbling. However, traditional approaches may lack competitiveness at an industrial scale. “The meat industry needs more precise and consistent ways to predict the quality of beef before it reaches the shelves,” says Geraldine Duffy, head of food safety at the Teagasc Food Research Centre in Dublin, Ireland.

View the original article here: Genetic Testing In The Steak-House

Did Monsanto plant GMO seeds before USDA approval?

Recently evidence has surfaced showing that Monsanto’s genetically altered alfalfa may have been set free in 2003 — a full two years or more before it was deregulated in 2005. In a letter, obtained by Natural Society with permission to post for public viewing, it becomes clear that the USDA may have turned a blind eye to the entire situation, allowing widespread GMO contamination of GMO-free crops.

View the original article here: Widespread GMO Contamination: Did Monsanto Plant GMO’s Before USDA Approval?

Political leanings and Prop 37: Do they correlate?

One aspect of the Prop 37 issue is that it is an area where the Left may be stated to be “anti-science.” This is why this was highlighted in Science Left Behind. But there’s a problem with this narrative: the survey data for it is weak. There are broad suggestive patterns…but the reality is that the strongest predictor of skepticism of genetically modified organisms is lower socioeconomic status.

View the original article here: San Francisco supported Proposition 37! 

Anti-allergen milk has unforeseen dangers

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The U.S. media has made much of the latest “impressive (GM) technical feat that won plaudits in the biotechnology world”. This impressive feat is the creation by scientists in New Zealand of a GM cow called Daisy.
 
Daisy’s milk is missing ‘β-lactoglobulin’, a “key” protein often responsible for triggering allergies. In the first year of life, as many as two or three in every hundred infants are allergic to this protein.
 
Rather than report the huge ethical, scientific and safety issues surrounding the novel cow, journalists have chosen instead to lament the “hopeless logjam” caused by the U.S. government in its failure to rush GM animal products to market.

View the original article here: GM-free Scotland: Anti-allergen milk… with added allergens

Cancer can teach us about our own evolution

By asking ourselves why cancer might exist, we can get a glimpse of life in a bygone biological age.

Cancer, it seems, is embedded in the basic machinery of life, a type of default state that can be triggered by some kind of insult. That suggests it is not a modern aberration but has deep evolutionary roots, a suspicion confirmed by the fact that it is not confined to humans but is widespread among mammals, fish, reptiles and even plants. Scientists have identified genes implicated in cancer that are thought to be hundreds of millions of years old. Clearly, we will fully understand cancer only in the context of biological history.

View the original article here: Cancer can teach us about our own evolution

Genetic screening and “toxic information”

Although [my] need to have a baby seemed to come from some emotional and primitive place, I wanted to be organized about my approach. I scheduled a “preconception” appointment and asked my husband about his thoughts on genetic screening. As a genetic counselor working in a prenatal setting, testing guidelines were imbedded in my mind – and I knew very well what testing options should be available to me. My husband thoughtfully asked, “If we are both carriers for cystic fibrosis or something else, does that mean that we are not going to have a baby?”

 Whoa. What would we do if were both carriers??

The term “toxic knowledge” has been used to describe genetic information that individuals may regret learning, following a prenatal genetic test (Bernhardt 2012). With the flood of new testing options, I am concerned about the potential increase of toxic knowledge and how this will play out in people’s lives. How will it change the pregnancy experience?  The relationship between parent and child? The way people view themselves?

View the original article here: Guest Post: Information Detoxification

In defense of eugenics

A recent article addressing the subject of Nikolas Tesla, chose to focus on his opinions regarding eugenics.  Of course, this statement is framed in the modern “correct” view, because it is clearly colored by the Nazi atrocities that followed those decades, and from which everyone invariably wishes to distance themselves.

Unfortunately, I expect that this belief in eugenics is far more prevalent than most people would comfortably wish it to be. One of the 21st century’s dressed up version of eugenics is embodied by the transhumanist movement, where the distancing is maintained by pretending as if technology can be neutral enough to achieve this “purity”. Further this is already hinted at by the thought that we may be able to genetically engineer “superior” offspring. Of course, these ideas are all couched in the altruistic verbage of conquering debilitating diseases, and eliminating defects.

However, it is eugenics all the same.  This is the inevitable result of scientific thinking without philosophical tempering.  

View the original article here: Eugenics

The “junk” in your genetic trunk isn’t junk at all

[W]hen the human genome project began it was assumed that, due to the complexity of human beings we would have a lot of genes, certainly many more than a lowly worm. No offence to round worms but we are way more complex. I mean they only have 970 cells, compared to our 60 trillion. So how come we only have 30% more protein-coding genes than a simple roundworm and why is so much of our DNA junk?

The non-coding or ‘junk’ regions can help switch genes on or off which, in turn, influences whether a cell makes a certain protein or not. Non-coding DNA can recruit machinery in the cell which can either promote or hinder the process of turning a gene into a protein. The non-coding DNA can also be actively modified by a process called methylation, which switches off genes. Methylation can occur at any point in your life and may represent a way by which our environment and lifestyle can actually change our DNA. This is one of many ways our underlying genetic code can be modulated and is called an ‘epigenetic’ alteration. Such epigenetic changes might go some way to explaining why genetically identical twins, who have lived quite separate lives, often become less alike as they age.

View the original article here: The Junk in Your Genetic Trunk

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