BioChemMajor
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Imaginary Genetic Engineering
Lets sequence the DNA of cannabis, isolate the genes for cannabinols, synthesize these genes, and introduce them into some other species (tomatoes,
corn, whatever fruit/vegetable/shrub. I beleive hops is a close cousin... would make good beer.) if we could produce viable seed from these
plants..... we could cover the US in cannabinol producing plants exempt from the irradication of cannabis (a horrible government program. if they were
trying to get rid of an animal species, people wouldn't stand for it. Who's in?
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not_important
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You would want to pick a major crop in the US, corn, wheat, soya. Anything with less of an economic impact would likely be targeted as is happening in
South America right now. Besides standard herbicide spraying, the US wants to use plant diseases that happen to attack some local foodcrops, but not
any of the important US ones.
Yes, hops is the close relative, and makes some distantly related compounds. And it got gene spliced as you suggest, soon the US would be important
all its hops from elsewhere (under close government supervision) while domestic hop would be targeted for erradication.
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dr. nick
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anyway - one could start experimenting right away with stuff like that if the appropriate agro-bacteria where available (probably a. tumefaciens in
this case). But they aren't available for private persons and that, of course, sucks.
Ok, no clue if one could have any success in kitchen-biochemstry-style but nevertheless it sounds like great fun 
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bereal511
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This sounds terribly similar to the "tomacco" plant in The Simpsons episode where Homer Simpson grew a little bit of everything using plutonium as a
fertilizer...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomacco
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a
scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
-- Matt Cartmill
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