Monthly Archives: January 2007

Boing Boing explains Horizontal gene transfer…. not.

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Boing Boing: Horizontal gene transfer explains evolutionary jumps

Paul says:

Rice University study models “Horizontal Gene Transfer,” a mechanism for evolution where big chunks of DNA migrate between different species via bacteria. This results in faster and more sudden evolutionary branching than what you get with the more familiar mechanisms of sexual selection or random single-point mutations caused by radiation, copying errors, etc.

Now I feel better about eating those tomatoes with the fish genes in them! (Flavr Savr)

My take:
I’m not sure who Paul is, but he gets Horizontal Gene Transfer totally wrong. Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) (sometimes “Lateral Gene Transfer”) is predominantly an event that occurs between two prokaryotic (read: bacteria) cells. Although there is evidence for some unicellular eukaryotic HGT, multicellular HGT has yet to be observed. Bottom line, Horizontal Gene Transfer does “speed up” evolution (and at the same time, totally complicates the analysis of bacterial genomes), and it does explain some evolutionary “jumps,” but it doesn’t explain all of them, and certainly not ones in multicellular eukaryotes.

Also, FlavrSavr tomatoes did not have fish genes in them. In fact, no tomato that has ever reached the market has had fish genes in them. The Flavr Savr tomato contained an antisense gene for polygalacturonase. That is, it shut down the gene expression of polygalacturonase. Polygalacturonase is a pectinase which breaks down pectin. When pectin is broken down, the cell walls get mushier and the fruit gets softer. That is, it’s part of the ripening process.

Furthermore, Flavr Savr tomatoes are no longer for sale in the United States and their trademark has expired.

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The Google TV Beta Hoax

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Ok, so for a couple seconds I did actually think the GoogleTV Beta howto by Mark Erickson* of InfiniteSolutions might actually be real, but it did just turn out to be a clever scam.

Here’s the youtube clip where “he’s concerned about the allegations that this is some type of hoax”:

Here’s an older Infinite Solutions howto tip where you wrap cat5 ethernet cable around your cellphone to boost WiFi networking capabilities:

Very funny stuff indeed. And I must say that him and his friends at Fatal Farm, Jeffrey Max etc. are very good at video editing, that’s for sure. Although, they do have a very off-kilter sense of humor.

* And, no, it’s not this Mark Erickson, who actually has some pretty cool paintings.

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Some other amazing Google Earth extensions

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My love for Google Earth is no secret. Here are two new items.

First cool Google Earth item:

fboweb.com, a fixed base operator website, has a nice kml file which lets you track individual flights or all inbound traffic for certain United States airports, e.g. LAX, JFK, SFO. Pretty wild stuff. I’m not sure what you’d really use it for though. (My first thought involved stinger missiles… {Also, on that tip, check out this.}) I guess you could use it to plan to fly over some specific landmarks for nice “through the window” shots.

Second cool Google Earth item:

Moving Past Push Pins, a blog by a company making software for Google Earth and other Geo-related applications, has a great post about mashing up data in the form of heat maps:

Below is a screen shot from Google Earth of 600 bars (rated between 1 and 10) in NYC and the location of single women by census block.

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Essentially they demonstrate its use to find bars filled with single women.

It’s not yet live, but when this stuff is available as KML links and you can mashup your myspace.com data to find heat maps of all the single or swinging bisexual women in your city of choice, well, to borrow a line from Dennis Miller: “that’s gonna make crack look like Sanka.” (btw, does anybody drink Sanka anymore?)

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