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Date: | Sun, 7 Dec 2008 14:56:49 -0500 |
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Peter Borst writes: “So imagine, if you will, if behaviors can be
regulated through substances introduced into the diet and if changes these
can be passed on via heredity. If the appropriate "switches" could be
found, a bee could be raised with improved hygienic behavior. Further, if
behaviors are regulated via gene expression, then the bad behavioral
qualities like aggressive stinging and excessive swarming could be
down-regulated.”
A lot of ifs in there, Peter. I can’t imagine that there are so many
of these genetic switching mechanisms that you could ever hope to have as
much control over the behavior of bees as you might like just by regulating
their dietary intake. For one thing those switches that do exist
presumably have good reasons why they are sometimes on and sometimes off
under natural conditions. Their expression, having evolved over the
millennia, must have something to do with what is of survival benefit to
the species. It is reasonable to assume that if such a mechanism existed
for a given behavior, it would have arisen as an evolutionary response to
some real and repetitive environmental condition. It is highly unlikely to
have arisen in some random way to fortuitously be there to meet some new,
unforseen challenge. I'm sure such randomly fortuitous genetic traits do
exist but they are rare. Those mechanisms that do exist, such as caste
development in insects, will likely be observable under conditions which we
normally expect to see bees in. That they would be latent, waiting for a
highly unusual dietary elixir is not likely, it seems to me.
Also, I have a hard time believing we are anywhere remotely close
enough to understanding how these things work to be able to slice and dice
them into the gene sequence to get the kind of control that we are capable
of imagining or desiring. I also have to admit that I am a little nervous
about where genetic technology seems to be taking us. It seems to me that
it will be really hard to account for all the possible unintended
consequences of playing with genes like they were tinker toys. But I would
have probably been afraid of sailing off the edge of the earth too.
Steve Noble
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