It’s been observed that invasive species have fewer parasites.

It’s also been observed that bacteriophages play a major role in keeping bacteria in check.

Suppose a bacterium is developed with non-standard DNA coding, either for convenience of the researchers, or in a well-intentioned attempt to keep it from sharing artificial genes with natural bacteria.

Sure, it would probably have trouble competing with natural bacteria for resources. But on the other hand, it would be completely immune to all bacteriophages.

IANABiologist, but this sounds to me like a really, really bad idea. (Protozoa would presumably continue to eat them. But invasive species have *fewer* parasites, not always none–about half as many, IIRC.)

I haven’t seen this aspect of artificial bacterial genomes discussed anywhere. Has anyone here?

Chris

“Eadem Mutata Resurgo.” Basically what I groan every morning when the alarm goes off, except that I translate it into scatological terms.

It’s all about HEAVY Quatum Computation happening there in the engine room. For example, even the most powerful supercomputer cannot simulate a simple protein folding that happens billions of times per seconds in a cell. Proteins fold according to the proxy wave structures of individual amino acid molecules within the sequence and form a new folded structure, that interacts according to its quantum wave structure with other proteins.

It’s like the QC layer was designed to be self-assembling to take account of proxy wave probabilities, so that it is easy to lay out a new blueprints, and then just let them self-assemble.

Thus, “an insect”, or “a human” is a product that generates “some profit” for the company, who “launched the product”. The questions is obviously what profit do they make

The keyhole rock at Big Sur is one of my favorite places–actually, the entire central coast is one of my favorite places. The irregularity of the rocks, the trees, and the waves somehow calm me so.

I’ve had some thoughts recently about genetic modification and the idea that “the genome is the ecosystem.” I contend that it is an error to think of a species as existing in isolation from its ecosystem. When we modify ourselves we are modifying the ecosystem, and when we modify the ecosystem we modify ourselves. Another way of saying this is that species don’t actually exist, but that there is a quasi-stable computation that is an ecosystem.

I think it was an article in Science News that brought this idea to the fore about genetically modifying mosquitoes so that they would not transmit malaria. As you have suggested for a long time we will not only modify ourselves but the world around us. And I’ll add we have no way of predicting the outcome. But as I said to you once before, our progeny will no more recognize us as them than we see Lucy as one of us.