Gene Mixing

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HerefordSire

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Imagine implementing this with the best bull on the market of your chosen breed? It sure does make genetic ownership disclaimer comments, such as the ones Star Lake Cattle Company has posted, allot more important. What do you think of this technology?

Bee semen imports make gentler honeybees

Susan Cobey of UC Davis is mixing up bee genes. Most recently, she imported sperm from a European honey bee to mix its genes with her line of New World Carniolans, a subspecies of the Western honey bee. She says the result is a "very gentle, very hygienic and very productive" bee. That's all very interesting if you own bees; more interestingly to those concerned with the decline of honey bee populations, Cobey also hopes the old world genes could give her new world bee more resistance to pests and disease.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/short ... .html#more
 
Willow Springs":2ff4cbjw said:
I'm in favour; the article is about AI'ing bees. Have we not been doing this in the cattle indstry for almost fifty years??


You are correct. I interpreted the article wrong. I think you could see how I did though.

Cobey's job is basically to build a better bee by maximizing the good traits and minimizing the bad traits. "Controlled mating," she said, "is the basic foundation of all stock improvement programs."

"Colony collapse disorder appears to be a complex issue," Cobey said. "Similar situations have been experienced in the past. CCD may involve a variety of factors; parasitic mites, bee pathogens, chemicals (both miticides used in the colony and pesticides in the environment), changing climates, loss of forage, poor nutrition and loss of genetic diversity. Overall, I think it's stress, caused by the combination of these factors."

However, by controlling the genetics of honey bees, researchers can breed stronger, more survivable bees, bees able to withstand such pests as varroa mites, she said.

http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/news/susancobey.html
 
brandonm_13":2tovdfpg said:
Yeah, mixing bee genes is a great idea. That's how we got killer bees. :|

I'm with you one that, maybe they could breed a bee to kill those and at the same time leave us alone! And while they are at it, get rid of those darn yellow jackets, I hate those things, they are pure evil! :devil2:
 
RD-Sam":15tkf3w2 said:
brandonm_13":15tkf3w2 said:
Yeah, mixing bee genes is a great idea. That's how we got killer bees. :|

I'm with you one that, maybe they could breed a bee to kill those and at the same time leave us alone! And while they are at it, get rid of those darn yellow jackets, I hate those things, they are pure evil! :devil2:

AMEN!! Finally, someone who shares my disdain for the hateful things.
 
Personally, I don't know anything yellow jackets are good for, unless you want to look like a banana. :banana:
 
blackcowz":3v19bwl5 said:
RD-Sam":3v19bwl5 said:
brandonm_13":3v19bwl5 said:
Yeah, mixing bee genes is a great idea. That's how we got killer bees. :|

I'm with you one that, maybe they could breed a bee to kill those and at the same time leave us alone! And while they are at it, get rid of those darn yellow jackets, I hate those things, they are pure evil! :devil2:

AMEN!! Finally, someone who shares my disdain for the hateful things.

I am afraid this is only the beginning of things to come.

Rise of the garage genome hackers

KATHERINE AULL's laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lacks a few mod cons. "Down here I have a thermocycler I bought on eBay for 59 bucks," she says, pulling out a large, box-shaped device she uses to copy short strands of DNA. "The rest is just home brew," she adds, pointing to a centrifuge made out of a power drill and plastic food container, and a styrofoam incubator warmed with a heating pad normally used in terrariums.

In fact, Aull's lab is a closet less than 1 square metre in size in the shared apartment she lives in. Yet amid the piles of clothes she recently concocted vials of an entirely new genetically modified organism.

Aull, who works as a synthetic biologist for a biotech company by day, created her home lab after hearing about a contest on the science fiction website io9.com for "mad scientists with homebrew closet labs, grassroots geneticists, and garage genome hackers".

After two months of tinkering, she engineered a microbe that she says is capable of performing simple logic operations, which could be the forerunner to basic biological computers. "Biology is wet, squishy and imprecise. It drives engineers insane," Aull says. "This would allow us to take the noise out of biology."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... ckers.html
 
I've hated those darn yellow jackets since I was a kid. I use to mow the granparents lawn and there was a big nest in the ground in the back yard. One day I had about enough of them and dodging them, so I decided I was going to shove a baseball bat in the hole. Wrong, it was too small, those things came out of there by the thousands and chased me all the way through the basement as I was screaming bloody murder. My uncle came out of the work shed to see what was going on, he had to blast them off me with the water hose and picked them out of my hair and everything, as I stood there in my underwear! Had hundreds of bee stings, and I looked like the Michelin Man for quite some time. We tried everything to get rid of those things and nothing worked! :mad:
 
Good thing your uncle was there. Maybe your higher power was working through your uncle and has a bigger plan for you?
 

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