Japanese researchers have inserted a gene from the human liver into rice to enable it to digest pesticides and industrial chemicals. The gene makes an enzyme, code-named CPY2B6, which is particularly good at breaking down harmful chemicals in the body.
Present GM crops are modified with genes from bacteria to make them tolerate herbicides, so that they are not harmed when fields are sprayed to kill weeds. But most of them are only able to deal with a single herbicide, which means that it has to be used over and over again, allowing weeds to build up resistance to it.
But the researchers at the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Tsukuba, north of Tokyo, have found that adding the human touch gave the rice immunity to 13 different herbicides. This would mean that weeds could be kept down by constantly changing the chemicals used.
Soylent Rice is People
Human gene in rice:
Tags: mutants, parts
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32 Responses:
So, if you ate it, would you be a cannibal? Or does that mean that now cannibalism is morally justified because really, it's just rice?
I maintain that this rice should be used to make communion wafers.
Wow! Then it really could be the body of Christ.
Wow! Your comment is oddly appropriate because of the Catholic belief in Transubstantiation!
I used to party in a church, so I can do the sacrilige thing easily.
Let me translate my last comment for you:
You were to read that as, "THEREIN LIES THE JOKE, SIR."
Yeah, I got that.
Now's the time to pull out the old joke about no-carb, high-fiber, low-fat communion wafers called I Can't Believe It's Not Jesus.
*ba-dumb-tish*
But, I can't believe it's not Jesus.
Especially if you're catholic.
There's always I can't believe its not Moses, Matzoh.
To completely miss the point of the joke, I have to point out that communion wafers have to be wheat-based, otherwise they're not "valid", much to the chagrin of certain Catholics with sprue.
If carrying around a human gene is enough to make rice people then we are all retroviruses.
If a woman cloned herself, and made out with the clone, would she be masturbating or having lesbian sex?
In that situation, my questions would turn more to, "is she hot?"
Great. How long before the "Right to Life" crowd starts protesting in front of every halfway decent Chinese buffet in town?
Vegetable rights now!
Soon rice will take over the entire planet and our pesticides will be powerless to stop them! We're all gonna die!
I, for one, welcome our new starch-based overlords.
Has the use of "I, for one" in <lj user=jwz> comments jumped the shark?
I, for one, welcome our "I, for one" repeating overlords.
It's all fun and games until somebody starts a sentence with "it's all fun and games until."
Now we are what we eat.
Obviously we should just cut out the middle man. Eat Brains Now.
Alternatively, we eat what we are.
That's a misconception. Actually you are what you don't shit.
I wonder how many genes we shared with rice before?
Do we want to be eating something that has a bit of us in it?
As noted in above comment, we probably share a bunch of genes with it already.
Pretty big difference between eating something with a couple borrowed genes and eating prion-fortified HumanChow.
Great. Nothing about, say, bioremediation. No, the point of rice that can digest industrial chemicals and pesticides is to let people use more pesticides!
We're all doomed.
The good news is, these are all pesticides that human liver enzymes can metabolize, so maybe they're less harmful to us, at least.
Can you say matrix? I will not be shocked, FLABERGASKET (ha,ha) to discover, us consumer's are ingesting our own as we speak, or type, or read, from the hormones injected in our chicken or even fruit gamma ray salad."Bovine Spongiform Encapalapathy." P.