>"Enhanced" mutation? > >How do the authors define "enhanced," relative to their >particular practice? > >That is where the answer lays. Not in any of our perceptions or >interpretations of what "enhanced" means. > >Todd Swearingen
Hi Todd It's an uncorrected scan, not easy to read, but it looks like all they did was mutation. I think the "enhanced" bit came from Harry, not from the authors. They've certainly got the hots for GM but it looks like they didn't do it. It's not much of a study, IMO. Using Cuphea oil, which they were unable to harvest anyway so they used an analogue of it in their tests, made up of various short-chain fatty acids to simulate Cuphea oil, excluding various fatty acids below a certain proportion (whence the cut-off point?). And compared that with a commercial formulation, Captex 355: http://www.abiteccorp.com/355.pdf They're enthusiastic about their results (of course), but it seems it didn't work very well - crystallization problems eg, and this they felt might be solved by genetic manipulation "or winterization". LOL! It all looks rather marginal, as is Cuphea itself. And, as Harry said, based on a misconception that transesterification is costly. Transesterification is obviously economically and generally feasible, so it seems to me you'd have to reach the end of quite a few rather long roads before what's suggested here became remotely interesting. One of those roads would be the large number of existing oil plants which have hardly been investigated yet, or not at all, as well as traditional methods of breeding and trait enhancement, short of GM and its risks (and costs). How would this stuff, all problems solved, be superior to, say, jatropha or honge oil as-is? Both of which fit in well with sustainable farming practices, agro-forestry, indigenous systems, etc, and aren't expensive freaks that you'd have to raise in a chemicalised cocoon. I guess they got their names on a published paper, makes their CVs look better. Maybe the hints at GM make it seem more topical. Best Keith ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/9bTolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://www.webconx.com/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
