[NonValueAdded]

Perhaps this is the article I've been waiting for. My concern about genetic engineering has always been that we're messing with the elemental forces of nature without really knowing what we're doing. It seemed to be like that scene in Fat Man and Little Boy where they are using that screwdriver to move the sphere of uranium (or was it plutonium?). But only one person was killed in that experiment.

I've heard the argument that taking a segment of DNA and splicing it onto another is little different than selective breeding or plant grafting. But I thought the difference was in bypassing whatever safeguards Mother Nature has in place. We have been told that we understand what the segment did but that understanding ignored the possibility that the same segment participated in other processes. (Does God not reuse code??? I thought he'd be at least SEI level 20 or something). Now we find out that a single letter can make a potentially fatal difference. Time for the Butlerian Jihad?

[Hacksaw]

Interesting! There is also a lot of research lately about how many cancers may actually be caused by viral DNA becoming integrating into cells.

[SunkenCiv]

Some researchers proposed nearly 20 years ago that silent mutations could fine-tune protein folding and function. And studies have shown how artificially engineering silent mutations into a protein can affect its folding. But "nobody was paying attention", says Anton Komar who studies the phenomenon at Cleveland State University, Ohio. The new study confirms that naturally occurring silent mutations can also have such an effect.