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Another change brought about by the Changemakers contest is that I now have a video editing program suitable to start coming out with videos that we have been collecting. Behold, I give you Marty Sachs and Candy Gardener talking about the stocks of maize seeds that they manage! This footage was taken at the 51st Maize Genetics Conference last year. I think I’m having some fun with transitions. Hey, at least I didn’t Many people, including me, are concerned about potential harm to crop biodiversity from gene flow. Most people’s concern focuses on transgenics. There is a certain probability, albeit small, that transgenes will end up in the progeny of non-transgenic plants, weedy relatives of the crop, or wild relatives that grow nearby due to pollen flow. Transgenes can also be moved from place to place by accidental or purposeful movement of seeds. How much transgene flow is actually happening is a subject of some controversy, but what about gene flow between non-transgenic plants? There is potential for problems whenever plants that aren’t supposed to cross stray from their intended mates. Some things to think about include how gene flow happens at the field and genetic levels and what characteristics of the genes themselves can affect permanence of contaminating genes once they get into a variety they shouldn’t be in. The Chlorofilms plant biology video contest has just closed the entry period for Round 2, and here is my submission. Pollination Methods: Solanum. Everything you need to know to make your own crosses with tomatoes and potatoes, two crops that are very much alike, believe it or not. I am producing these videos as a side project for my graduate program, which will eventually cover a wide variety of crops. You can view parts As a society, we are scared of viruses. They are too small to see, insert themselves into our own cells, and turn our bodies into factories for making more of them. On top of that, they make us feel ill and can be tough to beat. HIV, H1N1, Papaya Ringspot Virus – it’s hard to find anything good to say about the little pseudo-living things. So it comes as no surprise that when people hear that scientists sometimes use DNA from viruses to genetically engineer crops, they get scared. Viral DNA in food? How nefarious! Well, not really.
Continue reading… Long ago – before you or anyone in your family photo albums were born – a small, unassuming cyanobacterium was busy being engulfed by another cell. The engulfing cell’s intentions were most likely along the lines of “Yum, food!”, but lucky for us the cyanobacterium was not consumed. Instead, it stayed there, establishing a new home inside the confines of its voracious captor. We now know this happy accident was a momentous first step towards a greener, (By law, any discussion of chloroplast origins compels me to mention the similar origin of the mitochondrion. With those requirements now met, let us now continue.) The focus of this post will be more technological than biological, but there are a few basic facts we need to get out of the way before we can proceed.
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