I feel sorry for the poor tech who has to spend the next few years making new tRNAs for all the new codons.

Because a fake scientist in the wrong field has some insight that real scientists don't?

If that were true the way everyone keeps using it, nothing would ever go extinct.

That comparison isn't really accurate. You can get lysine from just about any other organism. Artificial nucleotides? Not so much.

I read that table too, and I'm still trying to figure out how to parse it. I guess that is what happens when you use an arbitrary measurement like a tablespoon instead of a gram, and also don't really understand science.

And for biologists, everything is related to cancer, obesity, Alzheimer's, or biofuels.

Yup, and heat seeking missiles mounted on his arms. I like to inflict this movie on unsuspecting folks from time to time, they are never expecting how truly terrible it is.

It's not just the farmers, either. The seed companies that develop these crops have historically not been helpful to scientists looking at the evolution of resistance in the insects, either:

The main issue with rice as a C3 grass is that C3 photosynthesis is less efficient at higher temperatures. As the temperature increases, Rubisco fixes oxygen more frequently instead of CO2, which costs the plant energy and makes it less efficient, even if there is plenty of water. C4 plants utilize an intermediate…

For sure, this whole article was written by someone with a very shaky understanding of biology. I've worked with research groups that are looking to allow better symbiotic relationships between nitrogen fixing symbiotes and plants, and they certainly don't think it's a brilliant idea to go mucking about with those…

So there are a couple of assumptions here that don't really make sense. You can't make any crunchy food taste like a potato chip without making it unhealthy, since the crunch of the potato chip is only part of the appeal. The fat is what makes the chip delicious, and so far we don't know how to fake that without…

You can use magnetic fields to levitate non-ferrous materials. It's what recycling plants use to separate aluminum and such from non-ferrous metals in an eddy-current separator.

That may be, but I'm not discussing politics. Though it may interest you to know that the largest portion of our oil is actually imported from Canada, which we haven't invaded in at least 200 years.

I think perhaps you did not understand what I was saying. Sugarcane CANNOT be grown viably in the United States in any quantity that can be used to make ethanol in an industrial scale. It doesn't matter how efficient sugarcane is, the climate here will not let it grow effectively.

I imagine so, but that day is a long ways off, and we need something for power until the hundreds and hundreds of advances necessary to make that true have come around.

True, but sadly they aren't better yet, so we need an intermediate. At least in the case of some grasses like switchgrass and sorghum (which wasn't mentioned), they can be grown in marginal and non-arable land, so they don't compete with food production. Switchgrass is perennial so it has low nitrogen use…

Sugarcane does not readily grow in most of the United States, and cellulose does not ferment readily, so we have no easily convertible carbohydrate to make into ethanol that wouldn't compete with human food crops. If we want ethanol, we have to put a lot more work into making it than you do with sugarcane.

You actually can with switchgrass, to a certain extent, and depending on your definition of the word modified. Lowland switchgrass is tetraploid (two copies of the genome) and upland switchgrass is mostly octoploid (four copies of the genome), so most times they don't cross readily, and switchgrass in general is…

Currently, PVC and biofuels are targeting two different markets. PV generates electricity directly, which can be used to power electrical grids and charge batteries. Unfortunately, most vehicles don't run on batteries yet and require a more energy dense fuel, and current technology is not very effective at converting…

It's probably pedantic, but the gene was named after the video game character, not the other way around. Some of the other hedgehog genes are named after other hedgehog species, and one was named tiggywinkle hedgehog before the nomenclature was cleared up. This is what happens when you let grad students name things.