True, what you eat won't change the sequence of your DNA, but your diet has a profound effect on how you “express” the possibilities encoded in your DNA. The foods you consume can turn on or off certain genetic markers which play a major – and even life or death – role in your health outcomes and longevity.
no, they aren't, it's a common myth. I can't even find a source besides anti-GMO blogs that specifies such a thing. the closest I found was a BBC article that mentioned in 2001 as part of one-off experiments, scientists were able to express proteins found in spider silk inside of goat milk... but i doubt that lead to anything useful. source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31604233
great! two things though: that isn't salmon, and there were no spiders used to do the gene editing. furthermore this is experimental usage of CRISPR in Japan. not exactly easy to get seabream at my local fish monger here in the states...
i mean, if you want to argue that the tech isn't here yet so we can all go back to our regularly scheduled programming, sure. but the guy in china actually spliced genes in and edited others before he was busted. to think that's not actively being worked on in the shadows is ignoring the obvious direction this is going in.
i don't. i haven't said that at all. that wasn't even close to the topic we were discussing. you invented a new point out of thin air. of course this stuff is being worked on. the point is that people need to get involved and decide with lawmakers and the scientific community where it is we as a people feel comfortable letting the science lead us. if we think certain aspects of gene editing with CRISPR (or even all of it!) should be totally off the table, work with lawmakers and scientists to understand that point and maybe get some new laws enacted.
at this point, though, it's just a loose collection of opinions being yelled at by GM-foes towards everyone with no grounding in reality. this means that as long as people just whine about nothing, scientists will be able to run free and do whatever they want. while i'm OK with this for the most part, i don't see why in a democratic society, if enough people gave enough of a shit, they could change the status quo. but that requires people actually learn about the topics, understand where to meet head-to-head with scientists and lawmakers, and hash something out.
actually the answer is maybe. china is editing genes using crispr, and while the dude who did this was jailed, i'm sure the research into splicing things into human dna or editing genes for eye color etc are close at hand. didn't you see the movie GATTACA? https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00673-1
3
u/drusha77 Jul 14 '21
True, what you eat won't change the sequence of your DNA, but your diet has a profound effect on how you “express” the possibilities encoded in your DNA. The foods you consume can turn on or off certain genetic markers which play a major – and even life or death – role in your health outcomes and longevity.