Musings on Darwin
Throughout history, a lucky few people have been in the right place, at the right time, with enough intelligence to connect the dots in the world around them. Darwin was one of these people. In Darwin’s time, some naturalists were already thinking about how the diversity of life came to be, but hadn’t quite solidified their ideas. On his famous Beagle journeys, Darwin simply applied critical thinking to explain observations of nature, such as the abundance of finch forms.
The idea of natural selection was a great contribution to the understanding of the world around us, but Darwin’s efforts aren’t much different than those of other scientific thinkers. Why then, are Darwin’s ideas so contentious while the others are taken as fact? What about biology makes it so much more scary than the other sciences? I see two reasons for the contention: the desire to distance humans from nature and the desire for simple explanations of nature. Fortunately, nature isn’t simple. Wouldn’t it be boring if it was?
To be frank, I just do not understand how evolution contradicts belief in god. If anything, a believer should be glad whenever we glean a little knowledge about the workings of nature. If god created life, shouldn’t we strive to understand it in all of its manifestations and to preserve it for future generations? Any god worth believing in would have created evolution to ensure continuity of life in the face of changing environments. Natural selection just makes sense. After all, it’s natural selection that brought us love (and religion).
Image: Ironic Sans
Window to a fish
In a sentence: Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital are inducing fluorescent cancer in transparent zebrafish in order to study the spread of the cancer cells. Now for a little background info to help that sentence make sense!
Zebrafish are one of the so-called “model organisms” because they fit a list of criteria that make them easy to study: fast growth, prolific reproduction, easy to keep in a lab, small genome without too much “junk DNA”, and so on. They are transparent during development, so we can see how their organs take shape over time. As vertebrates, their bodies aren’t all that different from human bodies, so they can give us valuable information about human disease and developmental problems
Once the fish get to be about 4 weeks old, their scales darken, closing the “window” into the fish. Richard White, one of the researchers, said they solved the problem “by mating two existing zebrafish breeds, one that lacked a reflective skin pigment and the other without black pigment. The offspring had only yellow skin pigment, essentially appearing clear [LiveScience].”
What do you do with a transparent fish? White put a fluorescent tumor in the fish’s abdomen. Unfortunately, my university does’t have access to Cell Stem Cell, but the abstract says: “transplantation of GFP-labeled marrow cells allowed for striking in vivo visual assessment of engraftment from 2 hr–5 weeks posttransplant… both transparent and wild-type fish had equal engraftment, but this could only be visualized in the transparent recipient.” In other words, the clear skin of the new breed of fish allowed the researchers to actually watch the cancer spreading. “Viewing the fish under a microscope, White saw the cancer cells begin to spread within five days. He even saw individual cells metastasize, something that has not been observed, so readily and in real-time, in a living organism [EurekAlert].”
So, what’s GFP? Green fluorescent protein occurs naturally in some species of jellyfish. The molecule produces a green glow when exposed to certain wavelengths of blue light. It’s completely non-toxic, so can be used to illuminate living organisms. It sounds strange, but GFP has allowed researchers to view biological processes that would not otherwise be visible. When tissue specific promoters (like light switches for genes) are used to drive expression of the gene for GFP, only that type of tissue glows green. In the picture, zebrafish embryos are expressing GFP controlled by a promoter for a circulatory system gene. A video showing a zebrafish heartbeat, visible via GFP, can be seen here. Now, imagine how much the researchers were able to learn from watching a tumor spread in real time.
USDA contributes seeds to vault
As if in answer to my recent post “Doomsday seed vault to open soon“, USDA’s ARS just sent their first shipment of seeds to Norway. From the press release (via ISU’s Agronomy News):
Seeds from more than 11,000 plant varieties are being shipped by the USDA Agricultural Research Service to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a partnership of Norway and the Global Crop Diversity Trust, is designed to store duplicates of seeds from collections from around the globe. If seeds are lost for any reason — natural disasters, war or power failure — the seed collections could be re-established using seeds from Svalbard. This first shipment of seeds from ARS to Svalbard contains 471 crop species, including maize, soybeans, peanuts and sunflowers.
Additional shipments are anticipated each year for the next 5 to 10 years, until most of the germplasm represented in the NPGS collection is also stored at Svalbard. The ARS shipment will arrive to be part of the grand opening of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Feb. 26, when the first sunlight for 2008 will appear over the Arctic night.
(ARS News Service, Jan. 30)
Where's the doomsday animal vault?
Ankole-Holstein hybrid taken by Sarah McCans in Uganda, 18 July 2006, via Flickr.
In the NY Times article “A Dying Breed,” some people fear that African Ankole cattle will disappear, to be replaced by Holsteins. The hardy Ankole can endure heat and drought, have tasty lean meat, but produce little milk. Holsteins can be rather fragile, but are milk factories. Who can blame some African farmers for trying to increase milk production by breeding the two together, producing hybrid Ankole-Holsteins? With careful breeding strategies, the goal can be a stronger cow that can produce a lot of milk on a diet of grass. I think it would be in the interest of all farmers to get some Ankole blood into their herds, with the possibility of warming temperatures looming. Read More…
Many hands make light work?
As discussed in “Farming in Utopia“, one of the benefits of modern farming is that it requires fewer people to produce more food. This benefit is ignored by those who wish to eschew technology in farming. People who have the luxury of choice shouldn’t force their choices on those with no choices at all. A prime example of this behavior can be found in Jose Bove. The actions and words of people like him mean that people in places like Africa haven’t been allowed to choose what types of farming are best for them.
Poor farmers all over the world are battling drought, insects, fungi… with their bare hands. They may have access to some pesticides and fertilizers. If they are lucky, their inputs are the right ones, and not too toxic. The farmers certainly aren’t stupid, but they haven’t had access to all the bells and whistles that farmers in the US, Europe, and Australia can choose.
There are many reasons for the disparity, including socio-political problems. The Gates Foundation is funding a new Green Revolution, with the goal of ending hunger in Africa, that includes a build-up of infrastructure with a healthy dollop of plant breeding. They recognize that a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work in Africa, so they are “developing appropriate seeds to attain the best yields in the diverse environments of Africa and working to make sure these high-quality seeds are delivered to farmers who need them most.”
The Gates’ program has many facets, but the absence of one is striking. Bowing to efforts of anti-technology activists, the Alliance for a Green Revolution states: “Our mission is not to advocate for or against the use of genetic engineering.” They “will consider funding the development and deployment of such new technologies only after African governments have endorsed and provided for their safe use.” This is sad, because the African governments are held hostage by the same activists on the subject of GMOs. Genetic engineering could bring critical crop adaptations to the people who need them very quickly, much more quickly than depending on traditional breeding or mutation via radiation.
Some people, such as those at Food First, cringe at the mention of the Green Revolution, but I challenge their opinions on the subject. It is unethical to condemn Norm Borlaug for the Green Revolution that he brought about. His calling was to end hunger, using the methods he had. It is unfortunate that he bred lines that are dependent on fertilizer inputs, but the environmental consequences were not known at the time. Regardless, the impetus was to feed the hungry. Today, our knowledge is much greater, so we can do much better – especially with engineered crops that require little-to-no pesticide and fertilizer.
Can we, who enjoy the spoils of technology, prevent that very technology from getting into the hands of the poor?
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