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Re: Reasonable questions



Replying to byron,
Your support of dale seems to be a vote for something but certainly not
scientific studies.  For example, the fifty years ago that you and dale
subscribe to was in a period  before DNA had been studied in corn Watson
and Crick  published the DNA double helix model in 1953 and their was no
simple and reliable way to accurately measure DNA in corn at that time.
I know because I was a student at Wisconsin at that time and my
supervisor was a corn cytogeneticist. Why do you two think that
comments  in old text books are more meaningful than current research
studies? Why do you two think it is smart to make comments that you are
not willing to support with publication?
You and dale seem to agree that  five or so  transgenic corn plants in a
field  of one thousand corn stalks cannot spread their pollen in the
wind and produce  a crop of corn polluted significantly with transgenes.
But your views  ignore the wind and other factors that may spread the
pollen  and the factors effecting endosperm production.
Wytze originally asked whether or not  5  transgenic corn plants in a
thousand safely assured  that the corn crop would not be polluted above
.5% in the final food.
You and dale seem to think that such a crop would be safe from excess
pollution in the final product. The discussion about endosperm  that I
provided indicates that the the endosperm  makes up most of the final
grain crop (not the embryo) and that  the transgene contamination is the
processed food made from the crop may be much larger then .5% but must
be measured in the food not by counting transgenic  kernels milled to
make the final food.
It seems that the two  of you together should be able to come up with a
full wit  conclusion but evidently not. You two just great  by avoiding
publications younger than fifty years old and that may be what drives
transgene regulation. However, I am still  wondering if there is any
truth in Dale's comment that regulating transgene pollution in
processed food is based  on the proportion of transgene polluted corn
kernels not the final food  product (not the standard method using
proportion of  transgenes to genes for  nuclear marker enzymes of  corn).
In conclusion, I wonder if the two of you are making  fun of  important
consideration, particularly, those effecting the transgene pollution of
organic corn crops.
Sincerely, Joe



Byron Simonds wrote:

I seem to remember that this discussion started with a "what if " a seed lot was comtiminated at (x)%, "what would" the (y)% outcome be in
the seed if the lot was planted?

From what I remember of my college genetics class, I believe Dale successfully answered the question. I also seem to recall that the Embryo
is what is responsible for making the new plant and that the endosperm is responsible for support of the new embryo/embronic plant until it
can support itself.


Dale Wilson wrote:



Joe,



...the paper below used genetics
to  show that grain filling mutations  can vary number of endosperm
cells relative to embryo...


This statement and the rest of your post (and the last several) are
totally beside the point.  This whole thread arose from a question
about expected transgenic contamination in grain arising from
accidental contamination of the sown seed, with a low frequency of
transgenic seeds.

My points have been:

1) Fraction of kernels in the grain crop that are transgenic is
predictable based on the frequency of the transgene in the population.
The gene frequency is not going to change much in the absence of
selection (unless of course pollen from another field blows in).

2) The amount of transgenic material *by weight* is roughly
proportional to the fraction of kernels (by number) that are
transgenic.



Answer:As I pointed out above your figures do not seem to agree with
findings published in journals.


You have not discussed ANY relevant papers.  All the relevant papers
relating to point (1) above are more than 50 years old.  This is
well-established text-book genetics.

Point (2) is common sense, pure and simple.

I think we should stop this thread.  I doubt anyone is interested in
it.  And it seems to me you either have some ineradicable mental block
about this or perhaps are obfuscating.  I am mystified by your
arguments.

Sincerely,
Dale

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--
Byron Simonds
E-Mail  :Byron_Simonds@ncsu.edu
Phone   : (252) 358-7822
Fax       : (252) 358-7880

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