Scotland's Cars Could Soon Run on Whiskey Byproducts

[Bugbear]

Your concerns for my apparent sanity are much appreciated, but the bit of research I noted was concerned with what appeared to be a bit of DNA from an mammal managing to migrate into the plant cells and alter the appearance of the adult plant.

I think it was mentioned in a radio program where somone was explaining using viruses to introduce DNA into Human cells where there is a defective gene. When challenege about the effectiveness of the process the theory about the red colour was quoted.

When it comes to managing to reproduce itself DNA is pretty much the one that wrote the book.

The feature which makes butanol so interesting is that it can be mixed into petrol and the average car engine of today will burn it without any major alteration - a slight adjustment in the mixture within normal tolerences maybe - but there is no significant cost to begin to use it.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

Ya, that can happen too, Pleater, there is a crown gall bacteria that can be fed DNA and then used to infect a plant to cause the mutation, however DNA can be directly blasted into the sells of a plant on microscopic pieces of tungsten,* kind of like a shotgun. I would not be at all surprised if there are many other ways in which this gene swapping could happen.
I'm still thankful to my ancient vegetable ancestors for hemoglobin, though.

Lynn Margulis, et al, have pretty much shown that there was a symbioses of single celled critters that formed the branch that became plants and animals; the mitochondria and the cell nuclei being different organisms that ended up in a third single celled organism, and possibly a fourth for the wiggly parts.

Yes DNA is a master "boot strapper," however, Seth Lloyd, of MIT and the Santa Fe Institute, in his book, Programming the universe: a quantum computer scientist takes on the cosmos, (New York: Random House/Knopf, Borzoi Books Ebook version 3.0, 2006), points out that sub atomic particles and quantum systems transfer or copy their bits of information about states of entropy between each other as they interact. The gist of the book is that the universe is a quantum computer that is calculating itself; I think you would find the book very interesting, Pleater. There's even discussions of monkies typing computer programs...

Being usable in "off the shelf" engines is a mager plus for the butanol; alcohol or ethanol has an issue with it's hygroscopic tendencies. I think there's other issues, too.

The tie in to Scotland, thus kilts?

James Clerk Maxwell's second law of thermodynamics, and James Watt's improved steam engine.



* I looked at a few of my plant biology and horticulture textbooks, and there are several other ways of injecting DNA into plant cells. Also, Harry Home (Lord Kames) dabbled in the agricultural sciences back during the Scottish Enlightenment, and the lead singer of "Jethro Tull," Ian Anderson, is Scottish, as well as, runs a salmon fishery.
"Jethro Tull Ian Anderson runs fish farm," by
Sissel McCarthy (May 5, 1998) CNN.