The bad news is that Russia recently announced that it had a new submarine-based weapon system. The good news is that no weapon system ever invented failed to engender a counter weapon system. And there will be one to counter the Russian system. But there’s more bad news, sorry to say. And that is that for every defense, some bad guy (I’m guessing the Russians would say this is an unfair assessment, that they aren’t “bad guys,” but rather a people just ensuring their existence under the threat of a violent, imperialist USA seeking world domination) finds a new offense, just as football teams work on strategies and counter strategies, new offenses to counter new defenses.
But there really is some bad news about defensive and offensive systems, something we can learn from cassava plants and their enemies. Devang Mehta and other researchers tried altering the genes of cassava to make it resistant to the African cassava mosaic virus, a plant-pathogenic DNA virus of the family Geminiviridae. Mehata’s group tried to make a “transgenic” cassava that was immune to the virus, and ended up with a variant virus that was resistant to their efforts. * In short, the Geminiviridae virus adapted faster than the scientists could develop a defense against it. It seems that the very process of making cassava more resistant made it less so because of the counter development of the virus.
Here I thought that the ingenuity of car thieves and the persistence of hackers were simply problems with simple solutions. In fact, the solutions at times breed more problems. The defense engenders a new offense, in nature, in football, in technology, and in war. Such, for example, was the fate of the Maginot Line. Such is the fate of illegal drug police and the TSA at airports. Such is the fate of all of us at times.
So, what can we learn from the cassava and its virus? There’s always some sort of “bad guy” working to circumvent the defense of some “good guy.” The newest and most clever defense always has a weakness. That’s a bit of bad news, but knowing it keeps thinking “good guys” alert, even when they are weary. Stay alert and inventive.
* Mehta, Devang, Alessandra Stürchler, Ravi B. Anjanappa, Syed Shan-e-Ali Zaidi, Matthias Hirsch-Hoffmann, Wilhelm Gruissem and Hervé Vanderschuren. Linking CRISPR-Cas9 interference in cassava to the evolution of editing-resistant geminiviruses. Open Access. Genonme Biology 2019, 20:80. Published 25 April 2019. Online at https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-019-1678-3 Accessed on April 27, 2019. The researchers used CRISPR-Cas9 in their gene-editing experiments in an isolated greenhouse. Imagine, however, that some gene-editor experiments with an organism in an effort to add a defense only to make a new offense that escapes outside the confines of a lab. Or imagine that a “bad guy” purposefully releases a virus that wipes out an entire crop. Think Irish potato famine.
But there really is some bad news about defensive and offensive systems, something we can learn from cassava plants and their enemies. Devang Mehta and other researchers tried altering the genes of cassava to make it resistant to the African cassava mosaic virus, a plant-pathogenic DNA virus of the family Geminiviridae. Mehata’s group tried to make a “transgenic” cassava that was immune to the virus, and ended up with a variant virus that was resistant to their efforts. * In short, the Geminiviridae virus adapted faster than the scientists could develop a defense against it. It seems that the very process of making cassava more resistant made it less so because of the counter development of the virus.
Here I thought that the ingenuity of car thieves and the persistence of hackers were simply problems with simple solutions. In fact, the solutions at times breed more problems. The defense engenders a new offense, in nature, in football, in technology, and in war. Such, for example, was the fate of the Maginot Line. Such is the fate of illegal drug police and the TSA at airports. Such is the fate of all of us at times.
So, what can we learn from the cassava and its virus? There’s always some sort of “bad guy” working to circumvent the defense of some “good guy.” The newest and most clever defense always has a weakness. That’s a bit of bad news, but knowing it keeps thinking “good guys” alert, even when they are weary. Stay alert and inventive.
* Mehta, Devang, Alessandra Stürchler, Ravi B. Anjanappa, Syed Shan-e-Ali Zaidi, Matthias Hirsch-Hoffmann, Wilhelm Gruissem and Hervé Vanderschuren. Linking CRISPR-Cas9 interference in cassava to the evolution of editing-resistant geminiviruses. Open Access. Genonme Biology 2019, 20:80. Published 25 April 2019. Online at https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-019-1678-3 Accessed on April 27, 2019. The researchers used CRISPR-Cas9 in their gene-editing experiments in an isolated greenhouse. Imagine, however, that some gene-editor experiments with an organism in an effort to add a defense only to make a new offense that escapes outside the confines of a lab. Or imagine that a “bad guy” purposefully releases a virus that wipes out an entire crop. Think Irish potato famine.
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