Why do you think that HPV is "incredibly rare"?
Population of US : ~251 million [http://www.census.gov/popclock/]
Population of US with HPV : ~79 million [http://www.cdc.gov/std/HPV/STDFact-HPV.htm]
That is ~31% of the population of a country which is aware of the disease and actively fighting it.
Fact is, farmers have been buying new seeds every year for far longer than GM seeds have been commercially available. I could be mistaken, but i belive that contracts prohibiting keeping seeds also pre-date GM seeds. Seed companies have made their money for decades by developing deep crop improvement research and development pipelines. Because they hire lots of PhD carrying crop geneticists, they can generate more improvement from year to year than a farmer can do on his own, with his already limited time. This enables farmers to outsource their crop improvement to specialists who are more efficient, allowing them to devote more effort on what they are best at, Growing the food. GM is just a new tool to help the seed companies, and the farmers that buy their seeds achieve the goals they have been pursuing for years.
The practice of companies selling F1 hybrid crop seed has discouraged farmers from keeping seeds for a long time, while also resulting in the increased crop yields from having specialists on the job (as you state).
The details of RoundupReady gene is a little bit different than this...
Monsanto found a bacteria in their chemical plant wastewater which was eating Glyphosphate. They examined this bacteria and isolated the gene it was using to break down the herbicide. They introduced this gene into plants, which now also break down the herbicide.
In my research involving a human pathogen, the development of drug resistance to some drugs mostly involves duplications, while for other drugs it mostly involves point mutations to relevant enzymes.
Do you have a citation for what is the most common mechanism of Glyphosphate resistance in weed plants? This is not a topic where I follow the literature extensively, so I am really curious.
It isn't just the selection for herbicide resistance in the wild farm-side weeds...
The most common weeds in a farmer's field are derived from the crop of last year. Over several years these weed crops can become very good at being weeds, having evolved outside the considerations of the farmer.
The only way to avoid this, in the Monsanto-ideal world, would be to have two herbicides (and herbicide resistant strains of crops) that you use on alternate years. Roundup would kill last years crop (and weeds), but not kill RoundupReady crops. RoundupPlus would kill last years crop (and weeds), but not kill RoundupPlusReady crops. Of course, Monsanto won't do this... since this would require incorporating evolutionary theory into their basic business model.
Recent hybrids don't lose their traits when crossed to themselves.
They produce children with random mixes of the traits of the grandparent plants. Each different.
You can cross an individual plant with itself (ether if they are self fertile or by manipulating a cutting with plant hormones) and get an 'inbred' copy of the recent hybrid.
The progeny of a F1 hybrid (referred to as F2 generation) will generally not have the traits of the parent. This could easily be described as the hybrid having lost the traits when crossed to itself (inbred). The diversity of trait combinations which will appear in the F2 generation generally make them useless for a farmer who is planning on a consistent crop. That same diversity of trait combinations is wonderful for a farmer who is trying to breed up a new strain of a crop, but this only applies to the minority of farmers.
I believe a more prudent falsifiable hypothesis would run along the lines of (and I'm sorry, I'm only a software developer): Due to relaxed external selective pressures the bladderwort's RNA polymerase has become adept at writing coding errors to the 3% noncoded DNA during replication and this actually still serves a vital function -- especially if the bladderwort is to survive in a much larger window than a few generations.
As a biologist and software developer, I have a hard time understanding what you are trying to say here.
Too bad then that Monsanto hasn't been inventing biological processes, just discovering them.
The gene to degrade the herbicide RoundUp was discovered in bacteria growing in the wastewater from a RoundUp synthesis plant.
Adding the Luciferase gene is fine and dandy. But to get the plant to glow, it also has to produce the appropriate luciferin. The photo they use of a glowing tobacco plant was produced by watering the tobacco with luciferin solution and then using a very long exposure. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Glowing_tobacco_plant.jpg)
That said, the luciferin found in dinoflagelates is derived from chlorophyll (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciferin) and it is conceptually possible to introduce the relevant algae genes into their plant... once the genes have been identified. This sort of metabolic engineering is a MUCH bigger task than the Kickstarter campaign people are planning for.
The energetic difficulty could be worked around by making the plant into a biological capacitor... where it builds up luciferin all day and then discharges in a flash at night. The plants wouldn't be of any use in landscape lightly, but they would be a really cool landscape feature. The downside is they might drive any local fireflies insane.
you should read further than just the abstract of the paper
it really helps to read what you cite. Don't worry, plenty of professional scientists don't do this... citing papers that don't actually have anything to do with what they're talking about in their paper.
The introduction of the paper contradicted what you referred to in the abstract. (This is fairly common because condensing the entire paper into an abstract leads to information loss.) You focussing on what the abstract said, rather than what the paper said suggested you read the abstract, but not the complete paper. There were several citations from the paper which, when those papers were read, contradicted what the paper claimed those citations said. This indicates the authors are not in agreement with the community they're working in. (Again, fairly common.)
Citing the number of Google findings from 'prion strain' also suggested a quick overview method of research review. Googling 'prion isoform' produced a similar, but larger number of hits. At best it suggests there might be disagreement over terminology among scientists researching prions. A more likely interpretation is that neither result means much, but referring to google as an authority could be interpreted as an attempt to prove superior Google-fu.
Several thinly veiled strains of condescension implying that (a) I don't know what a prion actually is; (b) I didn't read what I cited; (c) I cited a paper that didn't actually have anything to do with what I was talking about; and (d) I'm an idiot. Thinly veiled, but easy to translate: I'm an ignorant buffoon and you're an expert, so I should stop playing in the same room as you. In other words, you were a jackass.
(a)(b) How many of the papers cited by the paper you cited did you read? Doing so it made it clear that the authors in that paper were using the term 'strain' to mean what researchers in other communities mean by 'isoform'.
(c) I was referring to citations that paper made which made it clear the paper you cited was talking about isoform differences.
(d) I never said this in any way, nor do I think it is a relevant statement. If you know something that I don't, I don't think of myself as an idiot. If I know something that you don't, I don't think of you as an idiot. If we have a disagreement of opinion, I don't think either of us are idiots. Seriously?
Argumentum ex cathedra: "I'm an expert, all you amateurs stand back!"
Note that this is exactly the opposite of what I did. I was pointing out that real science involves arguments, but thanks for playing. I made no "thinly veiled personal attacks". The closest I made to personal attacks was calling you a jackass in response to you making personal attacks. You accused me of thinking I knew better than anyone else, so I pointed out that I am a researcher and that real science involves arguments as a matter of course. Me having an argument means that I think something differently AND I want to know better about something.
When it is incorrect, it is, at least *authoritatively* incorrect. -- Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy
