Superorganic

This readworthy wired article delivers an update on GM food and the Flavr Savr tomato …

Transgenic researchers treat the genome like software, as if it contained binary code. If they want an organism to express a trait, they insert a gene. But the genome is more complicated than software. While software code has two possible values in each position (1 and 0), DNA has four (A,C,T, and G). What’s more, a genome is constantly interacting with itself in ways that suggest what complexity theorists call emergent behavior. An organism’s traits are often less a reaction to one gene and more a result of the relationship between many. This makes the expression of DNA fairly mysterious.
form wired on GM food

… and lays out some threads of the inherent hubris of manipulated hybridisations to show nowadays methods working on the basis of genome knowledge to create the better food …

Add the knowledge and tools of biotechnology, though, and we are on the verge of something enormous. Plant genomes carry age-old records that reveal the complex manner by which nature manages itself. .
form wired on GM food

Let’s see … .. more to follow

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