Genetic Modification – A great benefit ot nightmare?

Posted on by Opher

Genetic modification can be an absolute boon but the technique has become so simple (via CRISPR) that it can be carried out in your front room.

I think this is the most amazing and frightening potential.

In the right hands it can transform the world for the good – agriculture, health, manufacturing (plastics, oil and a whole new range of materials from bugs) and removal of all those deleterious genes that we are dogged with. We can make better plants, better crops, better livestock and a healthier population.

In the hands of religious fanatics (who might want to bring about ‘the end of days’) it could signal the end of humans on this planet.

Who is regulating it? How is it being policed? Who decides how it is used?

Populism – The death spasm of the WASP.

Posted on by Opher

I think we are seeing the death spasm of the old fearful WASPs who are seeing their world eroded and can now see the writing on the wall.

They have had the upper hand and a sense of superiority that goes with it, the arrogance of the master, but the future is not WASP. Any fool can see that. That is why they are full of fear and hate. The future is much more of a mixture, much more global. But it is so difficult for some people to change and accept the changes. They fight to retain everything just as it was. It’s a battle they are doomed to lose.

No matter how much hatred and division they generate, no matter how many white supremacist leaders they elect, no matter how many walls they build, biology will win out.

The demes are mixing. The barriers are down. Sexual attraction favours variety.

The future looks distinctly brown and will be much better for it.

We are all part of everything!

Posted on by Opher

As a biologist I know that we are part of the environment. We live in an ecosystem. We are part of that ecosystem. There is not a special environment for human beings. We are dependant on the whole thing.

Right now we are destroying that ecosystem at a terrifying pace.

I personally would hate to see the demise of hedgehogs, frogs, toads, lizards and slowworms. I would hate not to see swifts and swallows wheeling in the air or not hear the chorus of songbirds.

I would hate to find we had slaughtered all the rhinos, chimps, gorillas, elephants, tigers, lions and tens of thousands of other wonderful creatures. And we are killing them all.

That loss would make our lives all the poorer.

But what will affect us just as much is the alteration to our climate, our weather, the water, food and atmosphere. We are degrading and losing soil, fresh water and fish. We are dramatically altering the planet.

Now you might not care about it; you might selfishly say that it won’t affect you much, but it sure as hell will affect your children and grandchildren and it affects all of us in terms of impoverishment of our lives. Nature is life affirming and renews the spirit. We’re making the world more sterile, plastic and uniform. That is a huge loss.

Sex is all about variation in your children

Posted on by Opher

Sex is all about variation in your children

Life is about survival. Life is about passing as many copies of your genes on to subsequent generations.

Variation is the key to survival. The most genetically varied your children are the greater the chances of some surviving to pass on your genes to following generations.

I believe I read somewhere that 1 in 3 children in any marriage have a different father.

This is not surprising. Biology works that way and civilization is only a thin veneer.

Sex is about diversity. The two sexes have different sexual tactics.

As a biologist it seems to me that:

The female attracts in as many males as possible and selects the one she wants. Her aim is to find the most superior genes for her children. She works on quality. She is attracted to successful men. Her aim is to set up home, have children and have a partner that helps bring them up so that they can reach their full potential. While maintaining this nest she will look to mate with another male in order to bring a cuckoo into the nest. This gives her children more variation. Females can produce few offspring and go for quality and a small range of partners.

The male can father many children. He is less selective. He tends to go for quantity more than quality. He takes his chances where-ever he can find them. He will buy into the family and nest-building and raise his children but will quite happily father children in other nests.

The biological result of all this is that there is greater mixing of genes and a better chance of surviving.

It seems to me that the puritanism of religion has only ever served to mask what has always been going on. There is a biological imperative at work. It operates subliminally at a very basic level and supersedes morality.

Sex rules. Biology wins out. Even in the most repressed societies sex will find a way.

Wildlife around Sorrento

Posted on by Opher

I spent my youth in fields, up trees, in ditches and ponds collecting caterpillars, frogs, newts, lizards, toads, snakes and slowworms. I loved nature.

I find it distressing to see the streams all clear of darting sticklebacks with fiery red stomachs and not to find a hundred grasshoppers flying out with every step. The ponds are no longer festooned with frogspawn in spring and the numbers of swifts and swallows are rocketing down. Squashed hedgehogs used to be a daily sight. There are few around now.

What are we doing?

I never saw a swallowtail in England but in the hills around Sorrento there were hundreds of them. It was difficult to get a shot because they were so lively.

I love the European common lizard they are so green. They were all over the place.

There were a lot of invertebrates too. Without them the other creatures have nothing to feed on.

These bright green frogs were mating in a pond at Herculaneum and making a hell of a noise as they croaked and splashed. In England they’ve mainly just croaked.

Flowers and plants near Sorrento

Posted on by Opher

Herbicides have certainly taken their toll on our own wild flowers. The flower-laden meadows and hedgerows are nowhere near as colourful or full of insects as they used to be.

I noticed it in Devon and the Lake District which are largely dairy areas so do not get sprayed so much with herbicides and pesticides. There are many more insects and the verges are more colourful.

It seems that the councils are becoming more aware of conservation needs – probably as a result of the loss of our honey bees (absolutely unbelievably disastrous). They are leaving the verges unmown. It allows the plants to grow providing habitat for insects and animals. What a great idea. These verges also provide corridors for wildlife. I applaud it.

In Italy it was a pleasure to walk out in the countryside and see the profusion of wild plants and insects. Wonderful. I loved the colour and scents and the buzz of life they produced.

Clean Meat!! The Future without Animals.

Posted on by Opher

Imagine that we can all have our steaks, hamburgers and chops without having to kill any animals?

That is quite possible.

In the future we will grow our meat in factories in the animal equivalent of hydroponics. We will take some animals muscle cells and culture them so that they grow into steaks.

The problem at the moment is that we can’t get the flavour or texture right. But we will.

Think of the benefits once we’ve cracked how to do it:

It will be cheap.

There will be no disease or parasites to catch.

It will not take up so much room as a farm or ranch.

It won’t be so polluting. No farting cows or transporting animals from farm to abattoir to butchers to warehouse to shops.

But best of all it will not involve any cruelty or pain. There won’t be terrified animals being trucked long distances to be electrocuted, have their throats cut or shot with a stun gun.

So I’m all in favour of it. The sooner they solve how to get it right the better.

We will be able to eat meat guilt free. There will be lots of redundant land that we can return to nature and encourage nearly extinct species to recover their numbers. We will have lots of cheap tasty protein that can feed our malnourished.

So roll on the era of clean meat!! I can’t wait!!

Biotechnology is the future! What’s the future for humans?

Posted on by Opher

A little while ago there was concern over test-tube babies and the multi-million dollar mapping of the human genome. Those days are long gone. Babies are routinely born through IVF and we can map our own genome in days for a few hundred dollars. We are in a new age.

These days we can take a gene from any organism, plant or animal, and implant it in any other organism. There is nothing to stop us taking a gene for fluorescence from a jellyfish and inserting it into a human embryo to make a child fluorescent green. It would glow in the dark and be safer on the roads. Could that become a trend for future generations?

The question is – where do we draw the line?

We can easily remove defective genes and replace them with working ones so that hereditary diseases such as Huntingdon’s Chorea will be things of the past. We can even remove genes that give us predispositions to cancers and heart disease and replace them with better genes.

I don’t think many people would greatly object to that.

But how about selecting the genes for intelligence to make our children supersmart? Or genes for height, strength and physical prowess to breed the next generation of sportsmen and sportswomen? Why spent a fortune on cosmetic surgery when you can genetically design people to look handsome and pretty with the perfect features and body?

Imagine future generations of uniformly super-intelligent people with perfect bodies – all those uglinesses, aches and pains a thing of the past.

It is now feasible to alter the emotional disposition of your offspring to make them nicer, more pleasant and friendly.

We could select out the psychopaths and violent killers. We could have an age of pleasantness and friendliness.

Does it all sound like Stepford Wives? – A nightmare? Well it might not be far away.

We are in the age of designer babies; the age when humans can change decide to alter things at will. We would no longer be at the whim of evolution. We would be in control.

We can make super-crops, revive dead species, create new species. It is all possible. Everything is up for grabs.

But on the downside an unscrupulous dictator could create super-bugs that would be capable of wiping out mankind (or selected races), or designing heartless soldiers with hugely calculating minds and physical dexterity; or scientists with devious minds.

We are on the threshold of a new age.

Is it going to be used for good or bad?

As with all human progress – ‘It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it?’

50% of the Planet as a National Park?? A solution?

Posted on by Opher

At present we are busy destroying our remaining rainforest, hunting wildlife to the edge of extinction, overfishing the oceans, devastating delicate habitats and ruining the planet.

The decline in the world’s animals is unprecedented.

If this goes on much longer we will have destroyed it all. That surely is not good?

The only answer that I can see is to create many more national parks. If we made 50% of the planet national parks and prevented hunting and fishing in those areas we would provide havens for the remaining wildlife.

Humans could live happily in the other half and our grandchildren would be able to have the wonder of seeing elephants, gorillas, chimps, rhinos and whales living free; to see rainforest, desert, tundra, savannah and plains alive with wildlife.

Surely there is room for us all?

The Green Marvel – A poem of wonder and adulation.

Posted on by Opher

I’m not sure is this really works yet. I might have to work on it some more. It depends on the meter of the words, certain speeding up and slowing down and the heavy emphasis of certain key words. I think you’d have to hear me read it to judge whether the flow is correct or not.

I wanted to produce an ode to that wondrous molecule chlorophyll. Without it our atmosphere would not have oxygen, life would not have developed aerobically and evolved into such sophisticated and elaborate beauty. All the animal kingdom would not exist.

Chlorophyll, a molecule of great complexity and wondrous properties converts sunlight to food and oxygen and powers nearly all life on this planet. Without it we’d all be slime.

Thank you chlorophyll. I love your green.

The Green Marvel

 

The green marvel of molecular architecture

Constructed of magnesium and iron,

Folded in organic delight

To attract the light and excite.

 

As electrons zip and water is split

Releasing hydrogen to do its will;

Mopping up carbon from the air

To create all the wonders of the organic;

To produce profusions of oxygen to spill

Into the atmosphere to boost life

Into the stratosphere of the evolutionary manic.

 

What an emerald wonder

To transform a planet and unleash life

To new heights of the organic.

Blue planet of water

Now green planet of organisms so rife

That they challenge the secrets of the universe

And explore the Big Bang’s daughter.

 

For chlorophyll it was the wonder of you

That unleashed this amazing storm;

That set the ball rolling down evolution’s gangplank

And clothed the bare rock

With the colours of a new dawn.

Without your twists and turns

There’d be no eyes to see

Or claws to shock.

 

Pigment with such transforming properties

To change atmosphere and great green seas,

To enable profusion of such complexities

That we are here to ponder your abilities.

 

Chlorophyll

You are the wonder

Of the world.

What magic chemistry

Set your sophisticated form

So that this spectrum of life

Could be unfurled?

 

Opher 28.2.2018