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duxpdx t1_ivj73ed wrote

I’m fine with this as long as they knock in those genes that give these fruits and vegetables back their flavor.

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Lesentix t1_ivj58it wrote

Please edit in some beef action for the tomatoes, medium rare 🍅

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tonymmorley OP t1_ivj7yag wrote

All beef (with the exception of mince) should be rare to medium-rare, no exceptions. Now let's crisper up an indicator strip or color change for medium rare. I'm totally over asking for rare and getting medium, or asking for medium rare, and getting cooked AF.

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jack_meinhoff t1_ivl28g1 wrote

Burgers should be well-done because they are made from ground beef/

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tonymmorley OP t1_ivlecq0 wrote

> (with the exception of mince)

" (with the exception of mince)"

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tonymmorley OP t1_ivj50rf wrote

Hey team, r/Futurology, can we get an agriculture flair?

>"Using the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR, researchers are altering crops and animals to add desirable traits and remove undesirable ones." From "Boosted Tomatoes" to "Super Grains", and from "Climate-resistant cattle" to "Fast-growing beef", genetic engineering (GE) foodstuffs is the future of human agriculture; to paraphrase Mark Watney from The Martian, civilization is "going to have to science the shit out of this.”
>
>
"Some cattle in subtropical and tropical areas have a rare, but naturally occurring genetic variant that causes them to develop a “slick” haircoat. Because this coat is shorter and lighter than the standard coat, those cattle are less prone to heat stress, which can be both deadly for cattle and costly for farmers. 🐄

Instead of trying to produce beef cattle with this trait this old-fashioned way, through imprecise selective breeding, Reombinetics used CRISPR to give beef cattle an inheritable form of the variant, leading to a line of slick-coated beef cattle. At the time of the FDA’s ruling, it said it expected to have meat from its heat-resistant animals ready for consumers within two years."

Hey team, I'm a progress studies writer and communicator; if you enjoy my work, you can follow along on the blue bird platform. 🐤

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theftnssgrmpcrtst t1_ivjc69w wrote

That’s very interesting. Can someone ELI5 how this is different from other genetically modified foods?

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ALilTurtle t1_ivk9vjr wrote

Traditionally we would use a special bacteria that can put its DNA into plants.

We would first find a gene we think would be helpful for growing plants and then copy it. Then we would put that gene into the bacteria.

To make sure the bacteria are successfully putting the gene we want into a plant (and not something else) we add an herbicide resistance that comes with the desired gene, so only modified plant cuttings survive. The plant cuttings grow up and are tested again to make sure they also have the desired gene and not just the resistance.

CRISPR, like another person mentioned, is no more a machine than you or I. CRISPR is a protein with some guiding RNA that tells crispr to cut DNA at specific spots, allowing us to squeeze in a gene at the cut spot.

Bacteria doesn't do the inserting, and we have more control over exactly what and where a gene is put into a plant's genome.

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Spiced_lettuce t1_ivkr4zi wrote

Most of the plants which are labelled as GMOs are transgenic (I.e. they have had a gene from another type of plant inserted into their genome). There is nothing inherently wrong about this, however it comes with a whole load of ethical, political, and some biological implications which I won’t get into. At the end of the day, it is extremely hard to get a GMO into market (and for good reasons), so much so that not very many are actually commercially grown, and many countries ban their cultivation altogether.

A gene edited crop is one which has a bit of a gene (or genes) literally edited. Think of it like when you’re writing an essay, and you go back and change the letter of a word, as opposed to completely replacing the word and in a different font, size, and colour (which would be GMO). The good thing about gene editing technology is it just replicated what would happen in nature: a little change (in evolution we call it a mutation) in the genetic code causing an advantageous change in the organism. Gene editing basically fast-forwards this process. Because of this, governments are becoming a lot more inclined to allow crops which have been edited to be commercially grown. This technology is still relatively new, but it’s potential is seemingly limitless, so expect some big advances in crop improvement in the coming years!

TLDR: GMOs have genes from other species added to them, gene edited crops have their genes slightly altered to improve the crop’s performance.

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TheCannaZombie t1_ivjlw8c wrote

Genetically modified means a wide range of things. Breeding two plants together to get better resistance or grafting one on another is genetically modified. This is using an actual machine to modify genes.

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IndigoandIodine t1_ivk6tb9 wrote

The ability to eliminate pest species is also a near reality. No more Japanese Beetles in the US!

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Dreadamere t1_ivke1y1 wrote

I’d like to see an industrial hemp plant that produces no THC, and I’d be curious to see if the THC has any effect whatsoever on the material itself.

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Whatwehavewekeep t1_ivm9vks wrote

I'll be interested to see when the material science nerds and the gene jockeys really start working together to see what they can come up with.

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the_fishtanks t1_ivm1629 wrote

Why would you do that 😭

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Dreadamere t1_ivm5hqn wrote

Industrial hemp is having issues with shortsighted bureaucrats and a federal THC limit of .03%

If the crop grown for clothing “pops hot” then the farmer is forced to destroy the crop and lose all of his investment.

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FuturologyBot t1_ivj73uc wrote

The following submission statement was provided by /u/tonymmorley:

Hey team, r/Futurology, can we get an agriculture flair?

>"Using the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR, researchers are altering crops and animals to add desirable traits and remove undesirable ones." From "Boosted Tomatoes" to "Super Grains", and from "Climate-resistant cattle" to "Fast-growing beef", genetic engineering (GE) foodstuffs is the future of human agriculture; to paraphrase Mark Watney from The Martian, civilization is "going to have to science the shit out of this.”
>
>
"Some cattle in subtropical and tropical areas have a rare, but naturally occurring genetic variant that causes them to develop a “slick” haircoat. Because this coat is shorter and lighter than the standard coat, those cattle are less prone to heat stress, which can be both deadly for cattle and costly for farmers. 🐄

Instead of trying to produce beef cattle with this trait this old-fashioned way, through imprecise selective breeding, Reombinetics used CRISPR to give beef cattle an inheritable form of the variant, leading to a line of slick-coated beef cattle. At the time of the FDA’s ruling, it said it expected to have meat from its heat-resistant animals ready for consumers within two years."

Hey team, I'm a progress studies writer and communicator; if you enjoy my work, you can follow along on the blue bird platform. 🐤

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/yphv08/7_ways_crispr_is_shaping_the_future_of_food/ivj50rf/

1

RealJeil420 t1_ivjxdaq wrote

Who owns these new genetics? Does this just inflate the cost of growing vegetables by adding an unnecessary costly middleman?

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IceColdPorkSoda t1_ivk57hx wrote

This will likely lower the cost of vegetables. The goal is to make them more productive, more bug resistant, and able to grow in poorer soil. The last point is key as that could vastly increase the arable land available around the world.

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TunturiTiger t1_ivkazth wrote

I can only imagine what kind of unintended consequences that will bring.

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RealJeil420 t1_ivl5ey4 wrote

Yea. When people cant afford to buy the seed required by big ag. They get to sell the farm to corps and all is well. I'd say theres a bigger issue with distribution than needing gmo.

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topinf t1_ivkkyti wrote

Yeah, sure, Agribiotech corporations do it for us! They love humanity, not yachts!

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bloo_Tube t1_ivs3u8c wrote

We are editing things to accommodate the toxic arena.... we have created and will continue to propagate. Not ironic? I understand some mitigation is negligible. But this, unfortunately, is our foreseeable future.

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ThisWillBeToast t1_ivj9ery wrote

Do you know what I think when I see news like this? Cancer

EDIT: People downvoting me should be way more cautious with what they ingest.
This is gene-editing guys, it's not a light thing, it could have serious health implications. Since I only control my behavior, I will not consume gene-edited food unless we have 20 year studies measuring it's safety, thank you, agrotoxics are already dangerous.

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[deleted] t1_ivjo4c4 wrote

[removed]

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theusernameofgod t1_ivkes07 wrote

The health of our entire country has significantly declined in the past 40 years. Obesity and cancer rates skyrocketed. Not really the best argument imo.

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HaruspexAugur t1_ivkl8ue wrote

You realize cancer is caused by mutations in your own DNA, right? When you ingest something, its DNA does not affect the DNA of your own cells, that’s not how that works.

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ThisWillBeToast t1_ivkxjso wrote

Cancer can be caused by a multitude of things: This movie shows that companies don't necessarily care about health more than their bottom lines:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film)

CRISPR gene editing carries a potential risk, study finds: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://answers.childrenshospital.org/crispr-gene-editing/%23:~:text%3DThey%2520found%2520that%2520CRISPR%2520increased,rearrangements%2520can%2520theoretically%2520trigger%2520cancer.&ved=2ahUKEwixgNDBoJ_7AhVUrJUCHT2yBXQQFnoECAkQBQ&usg=AOvVaw3wxVhCvVkxxPGcPPEEJf7Q

I know this is crispr applied to vegetables and fruits, but I simply don't trust this new technology, and I don't think I'm wrong here (unless you cite a study or some biologist/chemist saying this is absolutely safe for humans).

0

HaruspexAugur t1_ivmfqrc wrote

>Cancer can be caused by a multitude of things

"Cancer is a genetic disease—that is, it is caused by changes to genes that control the way our cells function, especially how they grow and divide." https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/what-is-cancer

i.e. It is caused by changes to our own DNA. These can come from many sources. However, generally when you eat something, it does not affect your DNA. If it did, then every time you ate something, it would change your genome. We know that's not how genetics works. There are certain viruses that can integrate their own genome (provirus) into the host genome, such as HIV. However, this is entirely unrelated to CRISPR.

>CRISPR gene editing carries a potential risk, study finds

This study was referring to using CRISPR on humans, in treatments for certain diseases. You will also notice that the very article you cited does not insinuate that this means we shouldn't be using CRISPR for this purpose at all, stating "the researchers suggest adding a check for retrotransposition to standard safety testing for CRISPR/Cas9 editing systems." They're basically just saying, here's another thing we should look out for when testing if certain treatments are safe. They did also mention a potential alternative method of gene editing to CRISPR, base editing. I would have to read more about this method to really understand its potential applications, but it sounds like something that would be useful for treating conditions which result from point mutations in the DNA. So, it could be a good alternative for certain applications.

Sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent. It's just an interesting subject.

To get back on track, you will also notice that this article is not talking about risks to people eating things which have been genetically edited by CRISPR. It's talking about editing genes in human cells. That is because eating something which has been genetically edited by CRISPR will not have any effect on your own genes. As far as I know, no studies have found any evidence of this being a risk.

I'm not going to say that there are absolutely zero risks to foods being genetically edited by CRISPR. They could always accidentally make a food poisonous by turning on or off certain genes. Generally, if this became obvious or people found out about it, nobody would want to buy the food that was poisonous, so it wouldn't be very profitable. For this reason, companies are generally going to want to test for that. But yes, there have been many cases in the past of companies selling a product that was adverse to people's health, either knowingly or unknowingly. CRISPR isn't going to change that.

tl;dr Eating something genetically edited with CRISPR cannot change your own genes, so it can't give you cancer. There could still be other risks because companies only care about profit, but they are the same as with any other product a company sells.

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Sylvurphlame t1_ivms71z wrote

GMOs might be contributing to the rise in food-related allergies. But not cancer.

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HaruspexAugur t1_ivn71ji wrote

Also CRISPR-edited foods are not quite the same as the GMOs that existed prior to CRISPR. The methods are different, so we can’t necessarily assume that potential risks are the same. More testing needs to be done, but it’s a fairly new technology.

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Sylvurphlame t1_ivn7lpg wrote

On a side note, I heard a hypothesis recently that the rise in peanut allergies specifically might be related to a — I forget the name at the moment — known allergen plant with which peanuts are recommended for crop rotation. A sort of cross contamination.

I need to do some searching on that.

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HaruspexAugur t1_ivn7v93 wrote

That’s really interesting. I feel like the science of allergies in general is so strange to me. Like, the fact that so many people’s bodies just react negatively to certain substances which are completely harmless to most people. It’s wild how it works and what can affect it.

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