Robt Mann wrote:

>  Sequencing is
> intimately, irretrievably tied up with splicing synthetic genes into living
> organisms, so bee-DNA sequencing deserves to be watched v carefully.  I
> still see no reason to do it.

Splicing came along well before any sequencing was even contemplated.
And it was crude. Fired some natural, not synthetic, living material
into leaves of plants and hope it took. I do not think that has changed
much. The practitioners have no complete map of the dna but are
operating on trial and error, using bacteria tags to see if it takes.

Sequencing, especially the human gnome project and the protein project
are aimed at understanding what does what so disease can be cured by
drugs that counter the "bad" dna or protein. The same thing would happen
with bees, if it were done. And that is unlikely, especially in the near
future, because it is the protein sequences that are the key to bee
disease, along with but not necessarily DNA. And they are a bear to
decipher.

And can't we all get along. This is getting personal and not directed at
facts. Where are the moderators? Can I post something on FGMO to raise
the entropy of the universe a bit more? ;^)

Bill Truesdell
Bath, ME