We Incorporate Genetic Information From the Food We Eat, New Study Finds
26 replies, posted
[quote]Research at Nanjing University has found that strands of RNA from vegetables make it into our bloodstream after we eat them, and can regulate the expression of our genes once they're inside us.
MicroRNAs, or miRNAs, are little strands of RNA that selectively bind to matching sequences of messenger RNA, resulting in repression of those genes. Their role has only been understood in the last decade or so, but miRNAs are currently believed to take part in a vast number of processes in both plants and animals.
Chen-Yu Zhang and colleagues found plant miRNA sequences in the tissue of animals that ate those plants. One of them, called MIR168a, is produced by rice and abundantly found in the blood of the Chinese humans studied. In experiments, MIR168a showed the ability to affect gene expression in mouse, inhibiting the liver's ability to filter out LDL, the lipoprotein with the street name of "bad cholesterol."
This finding reveals an entirely new mechanism of physiological interaction, which could have significant medical applications as a therapeutic vector as well as explaining processes that are poorly understood (Zhang's example is Chinese herbal medicine). MicroRNA is also used in the genetic engineering of crops, as a method of RNA interference.[/quote]
[url]http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-09/we-incorporate-genetic-information-food-we-eat-says-new-study[/url]
[editline]23rd September 2011[/editline]
Fuck yeah food science
So GM food could possibly have a negative effect on you?
[QUOTE=Fatal-Error;32438375]So GM food could possibly have a negative effect on you?[/QUOTE]
Yes, by eating it you will produce corn more efficiently and be more resistant to pesticides
Late, mods please close
[url]http://www.facepunch.com/threads/1127247[/url]
You are what you eat?
I guess you really are what you eat.
[editline]23rd September 2011[/editline]
fuck
I'm truly curious if this can explain anything about "alternative" medicine like they say in the article.
Of only this truly meant that by eating enough cockroaches, I could grow a shell and survive weak atomic blasts.
Next time I eat, I will tell my food: "resistance is futile, you will be assimilated!"
So next time someone calls me a vegetable I can retort with science?
Ha won't they feel silly.
[QUOTE=Elecbullet;32438384]Yes, by eating it you will produce corn more efficiently and be more resistant to pesticides[/QUOTE]
and more susceptible to a single virus capable of wiping out entire countries worth of crops
we're actually talking about corn but using people as a metaphor right
Consume bacon, become pig.
I'm a giant hotdog irl
Then I guess I'm honey-glazed ham
I might as well be a cow/chicken hybrid
[QUOTE=sam2d2;32439138]So next time someone calls me a vegetable I can retort with science?
Ha won't they feel silly.[/QUOTE]
But why would anyone call you a vegetable? That's hardly an insult. In fact it's simply implausible!
I am a huge pasta bowl.
I'm a noodle.
So its actually partially the fast food industry's fault that people are so fat :v:
Is that where my fat comes from when I eat fatty foods?
I'm a plate of blue waffles.
[QUOTE=Frisk;32440769]Is that where my fat comes from when I eat fatty foods?[/QUOTE]
No that comes from the fat in fatty foods.
Certainly interesting, though I assume the expression tends to show up over longer generations. Buti t might explain why some nationalitities have "evolved" better means of handling some bad foods even though it's not related to the standard diet.
For instance the ability of most european nationalities to process alcohol far far better than almost anyone else.
