THE NUCLEOTIDAL WAVEThe Front Line of Mutant Food (Page 4 of 4) 
| These transgenic potatoes were engineered by USDA scientist Li Li to contain carotenoids, which are good for vision and keep your skin from turning into alligator leather. It’s also why their insides are orange. |
“Scientists don’t know what they’re doing,” Freese said. “And it’s not just the Whole Foods of the world that are not interested. You’ve also seen market rejection from major companies, like Frito-Lay, which is not sourcing genetically engineered corn for its chips.”
On the other hand, Dr. Kim Hummer, a berry specialist and research leader at the USDA’s Corvallis, Oregon, Agricultural Research Station, said most people do not realize that their own bodies are composed of DNA from a striking variety of different sources. “We’re not separate, or better,” said Hummer. “The same genes reside in animals and plants. We’re composed of the same units. Moving them around is what humans are assigned to do. That’s what we’ve been doing since we started agriculture.”
Hummer is far from alone in her views. “If one believes in evolution, we all came from the same organism,” noted Dennis J. Gray, a developmental biologist at the Mid-Florida Research and Education Center, where scientists have been bioengineering grapes for the past quarter century. “That’s why an oyster—which came from the same organism that we did—has a lot of the same genes we have,” added Gray. There are fish genes in bananas, just as there are banana genes in human beings, and to deny the fact would be nothing less than biological chauvinism. Why, then, are so many afraid of foreign DNA?
“The difference is that in the traditional ways of crossing plants, we are stuck by the sexual barrier,” said Jules Janick, a professor of horticulture at Purdue University. “We can’t mate with a cabbage, but now we can take a cabbage gene and put it into humans, or a human gene into a cabbage. We’ve been moving DNA around for 10,000 years within limits circumscribed by the natural constraints of sex. The taboo against bestiality has unconsciously entered into our fear of the wide crosses that are now possible.”
Back at UC Davis, Tricoli handed over a sundae cup in the middle of which dozens of minuscule buds had sprouted. These were the plants I had come to California to see, the grapes interfused with jellyfish. I peered at the miniature tangle of vines and the clear snap top beaded with condensation. A knot of white roots had massed above the purple-black growth medium, and tiny green shoots pressed against the plastic cover, as though they could hardly wait to get out. Tricoli took a pair of forceps, plucked one of the largest grape leaves, and brought me over to a Zeiss microscope he had hooked up to a profoundly complicated mix of gadgets, black boxes, and a Nikon digital camera.
As Tricoli set up the microscope, he told me that he had grown up in a household of six brothers and sisters and that he could remember how precious food had been in his own home. “We ate,” Tricoli recalled, “but we didn’t eat well. Spaghetti two, three times a week. Homemade sauce.” Tricoli’s father, a factory worker for Western Electric, had eased the family food bill with backyard gardening. “I remember him germinating tomatoes and eggplants and peppers in the basement under little artificial lights,” he said.
Just then, Tricoli hit a switch and the lights went out. Outside the building, rain had begun to pound and the din of thunder and an endless stream of mechanized buzzes, hums, and clicks made the shadowed lab seem more bizarre than ever. Tricoli turned another knob, and his Zeiss sent a beam of ultraviolet radiation through the darkness. Then he invited me to take a look.
I peered through the twin eyepieces, and as my eyes adjusted I perceived the outlines of what appeared to be a tiny constellation of stars. The sparkling points, explained Tricoli, were microscopic gene-transfer markers made of bioluminescent jellyfish DNA, which indicated that a change had occurred within the grape plant cells. A proto-vine of Thompson seedless über-grapes was glowing in the dark, and as I watched the glistening blue-white beads, etched in black light, the notion crossed my mind that some disgruntled lab janitor had smeared liquid LSD across the oculars.
Eventually, Tricoli explained, the plant would bear fruit. And with a little luck, a lot of work, and governmental approval, a sequence of nucleotides from one of the grossest and most annoying creatures in the world will help ensure that a little drought will never get in the way of a wino and his bag-in-a-box.
Fred’s recent book about America’s extreme relationship with food, A Short History of the American Stomach , is out now. Special thanks to Maureen Hanson, professor of molecular biology and genetics at Cornell University, and Dennis J. Gray, professor and developmental biologist at the Mid-Florida Research and Education Center Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida.
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| anonymouse, on Oct 6, 2009 wrote:
there are glowing mushrooms too. naturally glowing! | | Anonymous, on Oct 3, 2009 wrote:
Glow?! I want the vision of an eagle and be able to hear like a dog or something. That would be "FUCKING GREAT!" | | Anonymous, on Oct 1, 2009 wrote:
i want to be a superhero. use me as a test subject.... even being able to glow would be FUCKING GREAT! | | Anonymous, on May 1, 2009 wrote:
"
If there’s a possibility to ingest DNA strands that are immune to disease, would there be a chance that this could be passed on to our genetic makeup? You are what you eat, no?"
You eat DNA all the time without it being incorporated into your DNA. It’s called food.
There is no evidence to suggest genetic uptake through ingestion. | | Anonymous, on Apr 29, 2009 wrote:
this is what comes out of people thinking too hard about what they are eating. just put it in your mouth, no questions asked (thats what she said) | | Anonymous, on Apr 29, 2009 wrote:
I did a project on genetically modified foods in school and its a really complex issue. On the one hand , there are potential health risks (though none officially sutdied or proved) and on the other hand it could serve as a potential solution to the ever approaching global food crisis... so whats it gonna be? | | Anonymous, on Apr 28, 2009 wrote:
I just had a scary thought. If the climate does change and our current crops are no longer viable, what does this mean for the seedbanks that we have buried to withstand nuclear fallout? They wouldn’t grow? That is a scary thought. | |
| duck duck goose, on Apr 28, 2009 wrote:
soon all our grown food and lot of our meat will be genetically altered. we should warm to the idea because there’s no stopping it now. those of you that are scared by this should consider that if global warming continues, we will have to use genetically altered crops in order for them to grow at all. | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
If there’s a possibility to ingest DNA strands that are immune to disease, would there be a chance that this could be passed on to our genetic makeup? You are what you eat, no? | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
I hope I’m not coming off to forward by saying this, but that is a very, very sexy potato. | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
I love this shit, but how expensive is it? | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
Oh no! I have a fear of ocean critters as it is. I dont want to be stung by a jelly fruit. | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
As much as it may be slightly fucking with god. I am all for the idea that we are able to create more amounts of resilient food considering there will be approximately 28 billion people on this planted by 2023. | |
| cat power, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
I feel like people with religious backgrounds are WAYYY more scientific than they are willing to admit. | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
Imagine the possibilities with marijuana. I don’t want to take away from Tricoli’s work -- it is incredible. But if pot is already the strongest it has ever been, we could manufacture a strain where one hit would lay you out for a day. That would be scary but I’d love to see someone try it. | |
| the max, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
shit, the broccoli plant looks like an optical illusion or like superbugs from the apocalypse tore into it. | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
avocados have a slim window of goodness. its sorta like when nasa tries to launch a shuttle, there is only a certain window and if they miss it they’re shit outta luck except with ’cados you only lose two bucks. | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
" instead of growing fruit that never ripens, how about we focus our energy on making fruit that ripens and stays there? like avacados. you only have about three days of optimal guacamole making before they turn to mush."
what the fuck dude!? where do you get your avacados? Mine last like one hour tops. sucky yucky | |
| Grant, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
"Gene bombardment" is the coolest scientific term I’ve heard since "primordial ooze."
It’s kind of fucked that drugs are put to market that end up causing horrible side effects but we are so cautious to allow genetically altered fruit to be eaten. | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
so how long until wineries start putting tiny jellyfish at the bottom of the bottles like worms in tequila? | |
| tammy faye, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
soybeans are like the christopher walken of food products. you never know where it’s going to show up in the least expected places. | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
So if food isn’t approved by the USDA it is illegal to eat? I thought it was only illegal to sell. I don’t see them storming the place and cuffing a research assistant for nibbling on a tomato. | | Anonymous, on Apr 23, 2009 wrote:
i like sweet potatoes and their insides are already orange. have they fucked with them yet? they make good chips too. and pies. they are pretty much better than normal potatoes in every way. | | Anonymous, on Apr 22, 2009 wrote:
The transgenic broccoli is very neat. I’m worried that if these plants work too well, though, that they will overtake the normal plants. If they also repel bees, we could be in real trouble. | | Anonymous, on Apr 22, 2009 wrote:
instead of growing fruit that never ripens, how about we focus our energy on making fruit that ripens and stays there? like avacados. you only have about three days of optimal guacamole making before they turn to mush. | |
| ghostfingers, on Apr 22, 2009 wrote:
this opens up completely new doors to uncles teasing nephews about eating things. if you thought swallowing a watermelon seed made a watermelon grow in your belly think of what eating jellyfish berries will do! | | Anonymous, on Apr 17, 2009 wrote:
this reminds me of when heinz introduced purple and green ketchups that supposedly tasted the same. i really think i could tell a difference in taste with the green one. never tried the purple. i’m always down for trying new food shit and it tasted different to me. anyway, that shit crashed and burned hard. | |
| Kirby Puckett, on Apr 17, 2009 wrote:
It’s a shame they won’t last forever on the stem or this would be a sweet way to light your room. Glowing fruit would probably set the mood just right for having naked models dip other vined fruits into your mouth and fan you with palm leaves. | | Anonymous, on Apr 16, 2009 wrote:
they look like acid test acorns. | |
| jiminy, on Apr 16, 2009 wrote:
it’s all good until you notice jellyfish tentacles starting to grow and you have to pee on yourself to stop the stinging. | | | Next 30 comments > |
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