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[pseudomonas]

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Comments

[lethargic_man]

Ordinary tomatoes do not have genes, whereas genetically modified tomatoes do.

I made a sarcastic comment to livredor a while ago about organic food containing absolutely no genes, which led to the suggestion that maybe we should start adding restriction enzymes to organically-grown food to guarantee it...

[pseudomonas]

Better still, we could clone the restriction enzymes into the plants directly, so it's endogenous!

[cartesiandaemon]

On the whole, these seem to be questions you'd reasonably hope someone with any basic knowledge of biology would know. Some are a bit ambiguous. I don't know how well targetted it is, but I expect many people would get it almost all wrong, which tells you enough.

Cloning is a form of reproduction in which offspring result from the union of sperm and egg.

Unclear. I assume they mean we normally make clones by copying a cell, instead of fusing gamtetes, which is correct.

If someone eats a genetically modified fruit, there is a risk that a person’s genes might be modified too.

I debated this. Obviously, the default answer is 'no' -- we eat lots of things with genes and they're all dissolved by the acid before they get anywhere near our genes, which they would have no reason to.

OTOH, this is sort of what viruses are, right?

All plants and animals have DNA.Essentially. Unless you include viruses as animals, some of which only have RNA. I can't remember -- I think it was viruses of which some had RNA instead of DNA, but I'm not sure

[pseudomonas]

The 99% is (I believe) of coding genes, not of other bits of DNA floating around your chromosomes.

[ewx]

If someone eats a genetically modified fruit, there is a risk that a person’s genes might be modified too.

I'm not sure why it'd be any different as such from the unmodified case, but perhaps you could modify a fruit to shed something which would then patch the consumer's genome in those cells it could get to? Even if you could I'm not sure this fits the usual interpretation of "genetically modified".

It is possible to extract stem cells from human embryos without destroying the embryos.

I'v no idea - are the stem cells usable and reachable even when the embryo is sufficiently big it can withstand losing the odd cell and being poked around?

Today it is not possible to transfer genes from A to B

I think these are both false but don't offhand know of specific examples.

[ixwin]

I believe the chimp one is ambiguous, because I undestand that there are various different ways of measuring genetic similarity that would lead to different results.

[pseudomonas]

Would any of the results be <50%?

[ixwin]

Hmm. Well presumably if you were actually comparing the...expressions?...of the genes (whatever it is that two siblings would be expected to have on average 50% in common), then a given human and a given chimp would have a lot less than 50%, but I concede that's stretching the point a little. I'd tend to regard a poorly defined terms in it as intrinsically ambiguous, even if they don't affect the final answer.

Looking at your earlier comment - I know that non-coding DNA is a large chunk of the total, but I don't know how much of it is in common between species - I guess it wouldn't have had all that long to mutate since humans and chimps split, though.

[pseudomonas]

The thing that siblings have 50% in common is rare features, I think. If you have a variation in your DNA that's found at a low (negligible) level in the general population, your sib will still have a 50% probability of sharing it.

If you're looking at a feature that's present in the entire population (as is the case for almost all coding genes and most of the rest of the genome), then your sib (and everyone else) will have a 100% chance of sharing it.

[doseybat]

I don't think any of the questions are particularly ambiguous. Any further clarification would create overly long and scientific sounding definitions; imo they got the message across very clearly for the purpose of the survey.