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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the zesty-sauce dept.

Gene editing could create spicy tomatoes, say researchers

Spicy tomatoes could soon be on the menu thanks to the rise of genome-editing technology, say researchers. It is not the first time experts have claimed the techniques could help to precisely and rapidly develop fruits and vegetables with unusual traits: scientists have already been looking at changing the colour of kiwi fruits and tweaking the taste of strawberries.

But researchers in Brazil and Ireland say such methods also could offer practical advantages, with spicy tomatoes offering a way of harvesting capsaicinoids, the pungent chemicals found in chilli peppers.

[...] Tomatoes and chilli peppers developed from a common ancestor but diverged about 19m years ago. "All the genes to produce capsaicinoids exist in the tomato, they are just not active," Zsögön said.

Capsaicinoids: Pungency beyond Capsicum (open, DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2018.11.001) (DX)


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by drussell on Tuesday January 08 2019, @04:31PM (13 children)

    by drussell (2678) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @04:31PM (#783716) Journal

    ... or the fruit salad tree from Futurama?

    (although those are almost available already just by grafting... :) )

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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:08PM (10 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:08PM (#783739) Journal

    Genetically edited tomatoes: okay. (but once was unthinkable)

    Genetically edited animals: okay as long as there is profit to be had.

    Genetically edited humans: everyone wants to pretend this is not okay, but corporations will do anything for profit, including manipulating laws and conditioning the population on what is acceptable.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:21PM (9 children)

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:21PM (#783747) Journal

      Genetically edited humans: everyone wants to pretend this is not okay

      Nope. I think it's perfectly okay. In fact, I think it's needed, because it's the only way forward WRT fixing stupid. And when it gets to the point that we can, then if we don't, that's just abuse.

      Plus serious genetic error repair, general longevity, vision and other sensory impairment, etc. Be nice if we could all have some in-built semblance of artistic / musical / etc. skills, too. Einstein played both the violin and the piano. Then again, he had problems with his socks and combing his hair... I guess everyone could use a little tune-up. 😊

      Bring it on.

      --
      I have neither the time or the crayons to explain.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:32PM (6 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:32PM (#783756) Journal

        I've already considered exactly what you say.

        While I have a certain internal reaction that this tampering is scary, I also have a reaction that as long as it actually works and doesn't have some other dire consequences (either individually or as a species) then it would be an improvement.

        I'm not sure if you can fix stupid with genetic engineering. In the short term we could more easily fix stupid by simply investing in education. Education is the key to prosperity, as a nation, but the effect is delayed and thus seemingly disconnected as a cause and effect. The west was won/lost because of a technology war with better equipped invading europeans, despite the interstellar distances traveled.

        Music and movies both could be fixed by nuking the RIAA and MPAA.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:18PM (3 children)

          by fyngyrz (6567) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:18PM (#783776) Journal

          In the short term we could more easily fix stupid by simply investing in education.

          No, we really can't. Native intelligence is innate; we are born with (in)sufficient cognitive resources for X; it's a physical brain-related issue.

          Education can only help those who can understand and integrate what they're being taught. There are hard limits here.

          Intelligence/stupidity are hand-wavy terms for a very real range of capability that determines what people can learn, and furthermore, what they can do with it once they've learned it. Or not.

          There are people out there who really can't — not don't want to, or avoided managing to — understand the world past [insert level here.] People like that will continue to be born, unless we find a way to stop it from happening. Genetic engineering will almost certainly be that very thing.

          Compared to the average person, I'm reasonably gifted, and I'm both aware of it and appreciate it. I've been very successful in my life because of it, no question. But one of the things I am very aware of is that I have well-defined limits on my comprehension that aren't the result of a lack of either education or willingness to learn. Some stuff is way hard for me that is easy for people I know personally. I wish it were not so, but there it is. For instance, my mother spoke English, French, Spanish, Latin and Russian fluently. I speak English well, Spanish poorly, and both Korean and Mandarin very poorly, and not because I want to, haven't invested the effort, or don't keep trying, either. Learning these languages has been very difficult for me. Some areas of math defeat me in a similar fashion. These appear to be very hard ceilings for me.

          Same for any other innate characteristic: you are what you get. Vision, height, musicality, etc. Right now, it's basically a roll of the dice. If we can do better than that, I think we should do better. I'd like to be better. I know perfectly well I'm not that good. I also suspect that the smarter you are, the clearer you can perceive your own limits and spot when someone else blows right by them.

          --
          A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single schlep

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:19PM

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:19PM (#783804) Journal

            When I say in the short term we can fix stupid by investing in education:
            * We can't fix a biological mental defect
            * We CAN fix a lot of the stupid which we currently have in our society
            * We cannot turn everyone into gifted geniuses

            That's all I meant.

            I have a mild form of aspbergers. I can hyperfocus to a degree. Poor people skills. Good machine skills. There are probably others on SN who could relate to that.

            People skills, to a degree CAN be learned. On my latest reviews I get comments like I could coach others in how to resolve conflicts . . . that's a surprise to me, but I've been doing what I do for decades. I proactively look to resolve conflicts. From personal experience, whenever there is a conflict, two people are not really seeing each other's perspective. Once everyone's concern it taken into consideration -- often in some kind of design decision -- the end result is even better than what either one person was proposing. The improved solution addresses the problems seen by both people. I also point out that we're on the same team, we have the same goal: to maximize our bonuses. Which at the end of the day means making the company profitable, successful, keeping customers happy, getting more customers, etc.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:43PM (1 child)

            by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:43PM (#783840) Journal

            Well...there's the size of the bucket (native capacity for intelligence, "g-factor") and then there's the effort put into filling said bucket. I have no doubt that millions of geniuses have lived and died behind a ploughshare somewhere, and equally that plenty of people are holding positions and being showered with intellectual accolades far beyond their actual capacity due to just being in the right place at the right time.

            Wouldn't it make the most sense to help everyone become the best human s/he can be, up to capacity? I'd rather work with a good-hearted janitor with an IQ of 80 than some entitled, sociopathic C-suite parasite with an IQ of 150. There is a reason INT and WIS are separate dice.

            --
            I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
            • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday January 09 2019, @12:44AM

              by fyngyrz (6567) on Wednesday January 09 2019, @12:44AM (#783921) Journal

              I fall pretty far over towards the "we'd all be better off if people were smarter" side of these issues.

              I certainly have no beef with "find a better way to educate them", and even have what I think is a reasonable list of things I would like to see changed in the educational and social systems to facilitate that. But the odds of them actually changing... not high. Too many entrenched hooks drawing blood cast by the religious, the morally constipated, the sports-afflicted, and the "OMG we can't let kids enter the work force" crowd. Just for starters.

              OTOH, the odds of genetic engineering becoming able to provide more intellectual capacity without otherwise screwing us up... I think those are actually pretty high, as in, if we don't actually blow ourselves up, destroy the climate, or meet an interstellar object in an unfortunate manner, it'll happen. Fundamentally, it's a technical challenge, and most likely a simple implementation once perfected. Not saying that the NIMBYs and reincarnated Luddites won't try to get right in there and piss all over everything. Pretty sure they will. Pretty sure they'll fail, too. There's far too much to gain here. Longevity, same thing.

              I'd rather work with a good-hearted janitor with an IQ of 80 than some entitled, sociopathic C-suite parasite with an IQ of 150. There is a reason INT and WIS are separate dice.

              Well, it remains to be seen how much of what we see as a natural divide between wisdom and intelligence is just another genetically guided characteristic. That whole "nurture vs. nature" thing has taken so many arrows it seems like psychobabble's most prominent cactus to me. It seems it isn't all that much about nurture, as long as you're not way out on the extremes. Either that, or it's factors we simply have no understanding of. IMHO.

              --
              If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?

        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:54PM (1 child)

          by fyngyrz (6567) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:54PM (#783785) Journal

          I'm not sure if you can fix stupid with genetic engineering.

          I actually missed a great example I have personal experience with as far as innate capabilities go.

          I have aphantasia [scientificamerican.com]. Most people can close their eyes, and if asked to visualize a beach, they'll actually perceive an image of a beach. You can ask them about details, and they'll tell you what they're seeing.

          I can't do that. I've never been able to. I can't visualize anything at all when I'm conscious. No images of any kind. When I sleep, and dream, I do get some visualization, but it seems to be very vague, as I have never recalled any detail at all from a dream afterwards. For most of my life I thought when someone said something like "you can see this in your mind's eye", I thought that was just a metaphor for remembering a description in words-and-feelings. I didn't realize it was an actual image.

          Since it turns out most people can do this (97% or more can visualize people, scenes and objects when they try), I feel like I lost a significant bit of the "innate human capabilities" lottery there. Would I take a genetic fix for this if I could? You bet. In a heartbeat. Maybe even faster.

          Perhaps as an attempt at compensation, I am very into photography. Photos have always served me as a visual memory. If I don't have, or can't find elsewhere, a photo of something, or physically get back to the scene, person or object, I'll never see it again. So I shoot a lot of pictures. I've been doing that since I first managed to get my hands on a camera back in the 1960's.

          Also, as a teenager, I indulged in using LSD; under the influence, I definitely imagined things visually — eyes closed and open. I was very fond of the drug specifically because of the awesome visuals, but it didn't even occur to me back then that this might be something along the lines of "normal" that I was missing when not high. I only found out when I accidentally ran into an article that described the condition. That was a very interesting day for me. In the Chinese sense of the imprecation "may you live in interesting times."

          --
          On the Canary Islands, there isn't even one canary.
          On the Virgin Islands... still no canaries.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:21PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:21PM (#783805)

            No virgins on either :)

            And thanks for the story, it is interesting to hear from people who have some odd man out feature to them :)

      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:40PM (1 child)

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:40PM (#783763) Journal

        The problem is that the error rate is currently too high. There's also the problem of ignorance and secondary effects, but mutations have that problem even worse.

        Still...getting rid of, say, muscular dystrophy, would be highly defensible...and the normal form of the gene is known. So in that kind of case the only problem is the error rate.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:19PM

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:19PM (#783777) Journal

          It will probably be impossible to reach a consistent zero write errors, but maybe synthetically created embryos will one day have less write errors than naturally created embryos. And then we'll have to ban impregnation by sexual intercourse. :-)

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:12PM (1 child)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:12PM (#783742) Journal

    Jesus likes to curse fruit trees. [wikipedia.org] He just didn't give a fig about them.

    --
    "Faith": The possessive form of "Superstition."

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:50PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 08 2019, @05:50PM (#783765) Journal

      That's a very interesting story to remember. I always remember that it happened in the early spring, and to blame a fruit tree for not carrying fruit in the early spring is rather foolish. (Perhaps the fig trees as far south as Israel have a different idea of the weather, however. A quick google yields:

      Jun 19, 2013

      Israeli Summer fig season under way. A month and a half into the Summer fig season in Israel and almost all Summer varieties are available for export. The season began in late-April and is expected to continue through August.

      though, so I don't think so. But perhaps there's a spring fig season. And also, Passover was in late April the year that's supposed to have happened...so maybe it's more reasonable that it seems based on local figs.)

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.