What Does HIV Sound Like?

HIV is a devastating disease, and is one of the many large obstacles facing modern science.  It has no direct treatment, and is posing a great challenge to the nations in Africa, with limited supplies and access to medical treatment.  Much advancement has been made to slow the assault of HIV, but none have solved this tortuous puzzle yet.

Alexandra Pajak has taken a different approach.  Rather than treat HIV, she has instead represented this virus’s genomic sequence in an artistic way.  Many artists have chosen their own paths to doing this, but Pajak has taken each of the nucleotides as well as the amino acids and assigned each one a pitch.  She strings together these notes, starting off of this set of information and choosing instruments and tempo to fit with it. Care to listen? Go to http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2010/10/27/what-does-hiv-sound-like-audio/

In my opinion, this melody has great potential to be very powerful.  I was unsure, as the music began; the notes seem disjointed and sharp.  However, as the song progresses further, there are harmonies introduced, and different instruments adding variety, and I think that the final result here is indeed an interesting and beautiful representation of a deadly and destructive force in our world.  The music even seems to have a mournful, plaintive aspect to it.  This seems appropriate, that this disease could be represented thus.  I believe this to be a powerful piece.

The Compromise of Genetic Manipulation

I’m sure you have heard of the new thing in food production: Genetically modified foods.  Very controversial, but the newest thing in a long line of increasing the possibilities of food.  This has sprung forward as a replacement to selective breeding, which has, through generations of breeding, given us many of the species we have today.  Both of these manipulation options have their positives as well as their down falls, but what if we could combine the best of both?  Enter Molecular Breeding: a technique that allows breeding for traits as in selective breeding, but is much more specific because it uses genetic markers to find and breed for very specific traits.

In this article that we read from Greenwire, molecular breeding is presented as the best solution to the food problems facing our world today.  Because it is the best of both worlds, it has less controversy, and has little regulation; it is being put into much wider use as the preferred method of agricultural development.  By using molecular breeding to find desirable traits, they have managed to combine traits from obscure and low yield rice, for example, and make the common rice be able to withstand flood for two weeks.  Or create a corn that is practically exploding with vitamin A, or wheat that can withstand the attack of aphids.  This process, rather than cutting and pasting genetic strands from totally disparate species, can simply speed up the species’ own evolutionary process by combining genes from the same species.

I find this new concept very interesting.  It doesn’t evolve actually ripping the genome apart, which is a plus for me, and I find that this seems to be much less invasive.  This combines the speed of genetic modification with the natural protection of the plants natural genetics.  I think that this holds so much more promise for our future without moving ahead too fast or endangering the genetic uniquity of these species. 

Pain free GMO factory animals: Ethically acceptable?

There is a new revolution in the world of genetic manipulation: the ability to genetically modify an animal to not feel pain.  This has been proposed to lessen the suffering that these animals go through in these places.  However, there is a lot of debate as to the ethical implications of this proposed solution.  Is no pain a substitute for a good life?  Are GMO’s even safe? Imagine the debate that goes on just for GM produce, amplified many times over as people fight for the right of animals to lead a happy life and not compromise that in order to assuage factories´ guilt.  The article that I chose to read dealt with this concept.  They say that because factory farm conditions are so awful, we should genetically modify the animal to feel no pain.  But why should we give in when we should be fighting for better farm conditions? You should not give in to the demands of the aggressor, because they will only ever want more.  We need to fight this new development and stand up for those who don’t have voices.  Their conditions need to be truly better, not simply treated. And pain is only one of many reasons that the factory farming is so unethical.  Why don’t we fix the root of the problem, rather than treating its symptoms?