{"id":9732,"date":"2014-12-08T10:13:58","date_gmt":"2014-12-08T15:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/?p=9732"},"modified":"2014-12-08T10:13:58","modified_gmt":"2014-12-08T15:13:58","slug":"advent-calendar-of-science-stories-8-the-first-gmo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2014\/12\/08\/advent-calendar-of-science-stories-8-the-first-gmo\/","title":{"rendered":"Advent Calendar of Science Stories 8: The First GMO"},"content":{"rendered":"

This entry doesn’t have a fictionalized story both because I’m on vacation, and because I don’t think there’s a single dramatic turning point in this particular story. It’s probably one of the most impressive human accomplishments of the last umpteen thousand years, though, and definitely deserves a place in any rundown of wonders of science. I’m speaking, of course, of corn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To a modern American, of course, corn (or “maize” if you want to sound European) doesn’t seem especially impressive or scientific, but it ranks as a great accomplishment because of where it came from. Which, as far as we can tell, is a bushy plant called teosinte<\/a>, which really doesn’t much remember modern corn at all. They’re remarkably similar genetically<\/a>, though, to the point of being able to produce fertile hybrids.<\/p>\n

Unlike a lot of other cereal crops–wheat and rice, say–where you can imagine cavemen<\/a> stumbling across cultivation of wild varieties, the path between wild teosinte and modern corn is not at all obvious. And it probably took a good while, in human terms, to get close to the modern crop. On an archeological time scale, though, it’s pretty quick, and once something close to modern corn was first produced, it spread really rapidly, powering most of the civilizations of pre-Colombian Central and North American. which isn’t surprising, as it’s a great staple crop: easy to grow, simple to harvest and process, nutritious and versatile. That’s why it’s in damn near everything produced by the modern food industry, too.<\/p>\n

Our other staple crops are also improved over their wild ancestors, but the teosinte to corn transition is probably the most dramatic example of the power of a bit of science applied to early agriculture. Somebody scraping by on difficult-to-work-with teosinte had to deliberately collect the few varieties that were better suited to human consumption, and cultivate them. And over a large number of plant generations, they created something remarkable, by noticing small changes, trying things out, and passing seeds and plants on to others.<\/p>\n

So, the next time you’re eating chips and salsa, or any of the myriad food products made with corn syrup, spare a thought for the ancient Central American scientists who made all that possible.<\/p>\n

————
\n(Part of a series promoting Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist<\/a>, available from Amazon<\/a>, Barnes and Noble<\/a>, IndieBound<\/a>, Powell’s<\/a>, and anywhere else books are sold.)<\/p>\n

(Teosinte\/corn image from NSF<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This entry doesn’t have a fictionalized story both because I’m on vacation, and because I don’t think there’s a single dramatic turning point in this particular story. It’s probably one of the most impressive human accomplishments of the last umpteen thousand years, though, and definitely deserves a place in any rundown of wonders of science.… Continue reading Advent Calendar of Science Stories 8: The First GMO<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[681,67,680,34,80,72,132,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advent-stories","category-book_writing","category-eureka","category-food","category-history_of_science","category-life_science","category-publicity","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}