cloning blue roses
Mackenzie Cowell
The Common Flowers projects is based on the first commercially available genetically modified flower, the blue "Moondust" GM carnation developed and marketed by japanese beer-brewing company Suntory. But although Suntory applied for and was awarded with permission to grows this GM plant in its key markets, it chooses not to. Instead the GM blue flowers are grown in Columbia, harvested, and shipped as cut-flowers to the worldwide markets.With Common Flowers we reverse the plant growing process, by growing, multiplying and technically 'cloning' new plants from purchased cut-flowers using Plant Tissue Culture methods. The blue GM carnations are brought back to life using DIY biotech methods involving everyday kitchen utensils and easily purchasable and ready materials.
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Russell Whitaker
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Cathal Garvey
Way harsh. What they are doing would actually be pretty difficult by conventional horticiltural means.
Russell Whitaker
> Way harsh. What they are doing would actually be pretty difficult by
> conventional horticiltural means.
>
I've attended enough community events at which artiste
hipsters like this promoted some or other "movement" or "statement" "art" but
didn't seem to have a clue about biology, economics, or art.
And all the talk about "releasing" the work product of a particular
company into the
wild, as if they were liberating an enslaved species, and making
twee references to their maybe-or-maybe-not pirate status - ooh! edgy!
- has the
hallmarks of adolescent disrespect for other people's money and efforts.
Then also there's that hipster condescension toward those philistine art patrons
visiting the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne expecting to see the
masters... sheesh.
So yes, I intended my commentary to be harsh, and am gratified my
tone communicated that intent. Thanks for the validation.
Russell
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Russell Whitaker
http://twitter.com/OrthoNormalRuss
http://orthonormalruss.blogspot.com/
Jason Kelly
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Russell Whitaker
Forrest Flanagan
ruphos
When Andrew Fire did this in petunias, he won a Nobel prize.
--
"And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then be at least its warriors."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Mackenzie Cowell
Cory Tobin
>
> Andrew Fire won the Nobel for buying flowers and then using those cuttings
> to grow more? Weird, I thought it was for RNAi.
For the record, there is a plant connection here. Antisense RNA
suppression was first discovered by plant geneticists trying to make
petunias more purple [
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC159885/ ]. They were
adding the gene for chalcone synthase in an attempt to force the plant
to synthesize more pigment. The result was white petunias (no
pigment). At this point no one actually knew how it worked. Fire and
Mello, working in C. elegans and human tissue lines, figured out what
the antisense-RNA was doing [ http://dx.doi.org/10.1038%2F35888 ] and
won the prize for it. So no, the Prize was not for propagating
flowers.
Anyways, back to the regularly scheduled programming.
ruphos
For the record, there is a plant connection here. Antisense RNA
suppression was first discovered by plant geneticists trying to make
petunias more purple [
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC159885/ ]. They were
adding the gene for chalcone synthase in an attempt to force the plant
to synthesize more pigment. The result was white petunias (no
pigment). At this point no one actually knew how it worked. Fire and
Mello, working in C. elegans and human tissue lines, figured out what
the antisense-RNA was doing [ http://dx.doi.org/10.1038%2F35888 ] and
won the prize for it.
That? Super cool. Engineering naturally blue carnations? Pretty damn neat. Taking a proprietary GMO crop and growing your own out of the cuttings? I can dig it. Growing those cuttings and calling it an exploration into wetware hacking and reverse "bio-piracy"? Kinda pretentious.
If they're curious about the control afforded by a copyright on a GMO plant, they should ask some farmers about Monsanto.
If they want to make an artistic statement about releasing "jail-broken" GMO plants (and for the record, I think that's a really stupid usage in this context), I would be more impressed if they created their own palette of engineered colors and scattered them across a hillside. Then you could watch and track the colors changing, infer dominance of the different colors and generally see what nature thinks of your changes. That would be pretty cool. Even better: design changing patterns over time based on the new dominance and heritability.
Simon Quellen Field
--
Cathal Garvey
I don't dispute that they're being really pretentious and overblown. I only meant to point out that regular horticultural methods would be difficult to pull off, I think, with a flower cut up to a week ago and shipped from Columbia. Especially as the company probably foresees the attempt and treats them specially to make rooting difficult.
As Simon points out though, plant tissue culture is totally DIYable. It isn't that different to regular microbiology, and the only awkward thing to get is the murashige&skoog salts. I saw a great writeup of a workshop done in Newcastle by Brian Degger and co, where they used fruit or root vegetables as a quick source of hormones.
Broadly I'm in agreement on this project: culturing GMO flowers to establish local plants is neat, but not groundbreaking. What DID catch my eye is their claim that they have released them into the wild in Germany..I hope they are aware that it carries a jail sentence. That act IS pretty groundbreaking; it marks the first act of bio-anarchy in the form of deliberate, nonlegal GMO release in Europe (that I am aware of).
Jason Bobe
On Thursday, June 23, 2011 12:58:46 AM UTC-7, Cathal wrote:
Broadly I'm in agreement on this project: culturing GMO flowers to establish local plants is neat, but not groundbreaking. What DID catch my eye is their claim that they have released them into the wild in Germany..I hope they are aware that it carries a jail sentence. That act IS pretty groundbreaking; it marks the first act of bio-anarchy in the form of deliberate, nonlegal GMO release in Europe (that I am aware of).
Nathan McCorkle
know what media they used, and where they sourced the ingredients...
if its not released, what good is it to the community? (OK they said
the plant is back in the gene pool, so maybe that will be of some
benefit, maybe)
Without knowing what genes were added, I can't say if releasing the
plants will be harmful or benign to the natural areas they released
the plants into... but that's info they may not even know, though I
haven't googled for the modifications that made the plants blue.
Seems cool, but also something that an old green-thumb like my dad
could do, if he was in the clear of laws, etc... Another thing I
wonder is, if you buy the cut flowers, is there specifically a license
that you agree to, maybe its hidden in some terms of the buyer
agreement, maybe not??? If not, then they may not have 'punkd'
anything.
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Nathan McCorkle
Rochester Institute of Technology
College of Science, Biotechnology/Bioinformatics
Mackenzie Cowell
J. S. John
to be roses.
Pat
terrible into the environmental. Humans have grown crops along side
their plant cousin for thousands of years and genetic mixing does
occur. Now some wild populations may end up with some blue pigment
but it maybe easier said then done if a whole gene pathway was
introduced. It will be a wonder if these population of blue carnation
actually survive in the wild.
Does anyone see this as borderline eco-terrorism?
On Jun 23, 11:58 pm, Mackenzie Cowell <m...@diybio.org> wrote:
> Incidentally, the home-tissue-culture mailing list predates diybio by 12
> years (!) and has 3000+ members. It's all about clonal propagation of
> plants w/ diy methods.
>
> another point of non-overlap w/ our communities, it would seem...
>
Pat
They are carnations. For whatever reason the image on the background
of there website is a rose. But all the other images including the
ones they tissue cultured are carnation. Doubled carnations to be
specific.
On Jun 24, 11:04 am, Pat <ele...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There should not be any problems they haven't released anything
> terrible into the environmental. Humans have grown crops along side
> their plant cousin for thousands of years and genetic mixing does
> occur. Now some wild populations may end up with some blue pigment
> but it maybe easier said then done if a whole gene pathway was
> introduced. It will be a wonder if these population of blue carnation
> actually survive in the wild.
>
> Does anyone see this as borderline eco-terrorism?
>
> On Jun 23, 11:58 pm, Mackenzie Cowell <m...@diybio.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Incidentally, the home-tissue-culture mailing list predates diybio by 12
> > years (!) and has 3000+ members. It's all about clonal propagation of
> > plants w/ diy methods.
>
> > another point of non-overlap w/ our communities, it would seem...
>
Tom Randall
> terrible into the environmental. Humans have grown crops along side
> their plant cousin for thousands of years and genetic mixing does
> occur. Now some wild populations may end up with some blue pigment
> but it maybe easier said then done if a whole gene pathway was
> introduced. It will be a wonder if these population of blue carnation
> actually survive in the wild.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110624/lf_afp/colombiacrimedrugbiotech
Simon Quellen Field
--
Aaron Hicks
another interesting GM release
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110624/lf_afp/colombiacrimedrugbiotech
Does anyone have any proof the product is actually GMO'd, or is this just rumor and hype?
""La Cominera's" higher value is due to its increased concentration of THC, the plant's principal active ingredient, and the modified plant verges on an 18 percent concentration level, compared to a normal marijuana plant's two to seven percent, said the researcher."
There are clones that express THC concentration over 24%; one lab test of G-13 came out at 26.8%.
Full Spectrum in Colorado lists a number of lab tests where raw plant material tested in at over 25% THC by weight:
http://fullspectrumlabs.com/tested/products/?strain=&cannabinoid=THC&above_c=25&ratio=&above_r=&type=raw%20plant%20material&result=&order_by=total_cannabinoids
Frankly, if the goal is to increase cannabinoid concentration through genetic modification, 1) I'm not sure anyone has identified the genes that encode for cannabinoid production and 2) 18% THC is still pretty miserable.
Odds are, it's pure hype.
Nathan McCorkle
> So my prediction that drug cartels would be getting into DNA research
> wasn't that far off after all.
> ;-)
From what it says, the seeds came from the Swedes... and I'm not sure
this article is really talking about anything more than traditional
selective breeding techniques.
--
Simon Quellen Field
Pat
clones resulted from colchine treatment or a similar mitotic
inhibiting drug than from a recombinant technique.
On Jun 27, 6:30 pm, Simon Quellen Field <sfi...@scitoys.com> wrote:
> When quoting percentages, you have to ask whether it is dry weight
> or fresh cuttings. It makes a huge difference. The higher numbers are always
> dry weight.
>
> Several sources believe there is GM dope out there, with some guesses
> as to who did the work:
>
> Monsanto?
> "http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/1322.html"
> Some hacker in Canada?
> "http://fromheretosingularity.com/2005/11/genetically-modified-marjiuana/"
> Or San Diego?
> "
> Or Venezuela?
> "http://en.scientificcommons.org/51941320"
> And who might step up to win *this *prize:
>
> And who knew soccer balls used to be made of hemp?
>
> And even on Google Scholar you have to be careful.
> These researchers: "http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL-YOKE200203008.htm"
> seem to think Cannabis is a monocot, when it is obviously a dicot.
>
> -----
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>
>
>
> > On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 8:35 AM, Tom Randall <tarand...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> another interesting GM release
> >>http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110624/lf_afp/colombiacrimedrugbiotech
>
> > Does anyone have any proof the product is actually GMO'd, or is this just
> > rumor and hype?
>
> > ""La Cominera's" higher value is due to its increased concentration of THC,
> > the plant's principal active ingredient, and the modified plant verges on an
> > 18 percent concentration level, compared to a normal marijuana plant's two
> > to seven percent, said the researcher."
>
> > There are clones that express THC concentration over 24%; one lab test of
> > G-13 came out at 26.8%.
>
> > Full Spectrum in Colorado lists a number of lab tests where raw plant
> > material tested in at over 25% THC by weight:
>
Marc Dusseiller
this is marc from the hackteria network. of course i know georg tremmel, cloned the plants with him at a workshop, and invited him to come over this summer, if we get some funds...
how to improve communication should be one of the key topics when we meet, mac!
all the best,
dusjagr
Mac Cowell
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