Has it been a year already? Oh yes it has! Last Halloween was the launch of Biofortified, with the very first post of the blog. Since then it has been 80 posts of plant genetics goodness and 230 comments. We’ve had a couple guest posts and some interesting dialogue. We entered a big contest and had a lot of excitement recently… will Frank get a birthday present in a few days?
I know I see a lot of new faces around lately, some people introducing themselves here and there, but there are a lot more people reading than commenting. Blogs sometimes have “de-lurker” posts for people who who have been reading in the background (so-called Lurkers) to drop in and say hi. Tell us a bit about yourselves, what do you want to see here in the future? Favorite crop?
In the meantime, enjoy Ghost of ‘Frankenfood’ Haunts Europe. Boo!
If no will else wants to get the ball rolling, I will, though I’m guessing the authors already know I read.
I’m a plant/computational biologist working on my PhD in Berkeley. I’ve really enjoyed following Biofortified since I was first introduced to it last spring. If I could change one thing about site it would be more updates combatting common misinformation floating around the web about genetic engineering. This week’s seems to be misreading “Indirect costs of a nontarget pathogen mitigate the direct benefits of a virus-resistant transgene in wild Cucurbita” as a failure of the virus resistance trait in domestic squash. (Although I realize and deeply appreciate the effort keeping the steady stream of updates we’re already treated to takes especially as the primary authors are graduate students as well).
Oh yeah, and my favorite crop is Zea mays (corn), although the Tomatillo is running a close second this week.
I’ve only been reading since I was pointed over here (either from Science Based Medicine or erv, whoever got to it first) for the whole Changemakers vote thing. Back when I was in school, I was thinking about going into plant genetics and retain a big interest in it.
I wish I had, but ah well. At 30, I’m “too old” to go back to school, but I can still read about the science that I love.
Hi. I’m Mary. I’m a vegetarian Pisces and my favorite crop is rice. However, I actually love lentils in many forms and they provide most of my protein, so they are a close second. I have worked on carrot cell culture in the past, though. 🙂
I’m a software trainer for open source genomics software. I have no ties to BigAg in any manner. Never worked for them. Don’t have any contracts with them.
Over at Steve’s blog (Sustainablog) I was saying that I want a science defender’s bat signal. Maybe ours could be a sheaf of wheat or something….You know, you shine it in the night sky and we all rush to the Biofortified cave and then we all take off to the site that needs some science! Or maybe Frank could just tweet that we need to go to the cave…?
Or, ok, maybe if you don’t want to use the prize money for the bat signal, we could have a weekly running open thread where we can bring over some stuff we find on the internet — good articles, bad articles, etc. Just a place were we can drop tidbits and off topic stuff, ya know?
Happy Birthday, Frank!
A Frank signal! I like it. Quick, Frankenfriends, to the Bio-blog!
I’m certain that if I saw this appear in my twitter feed I’d come right over….
http://screencast.com/t/Zqa1E3XxLg
Hi, I’m Matt and I am an undergraduate (non-traditional) at the University of Minnesota studying biology. I started reading biofortified over the last week or so after it was linked to at Pharyngula ( and some others, but I read the Pharyngula link first). I have really been enjoying what I have read so far. My skepticism has only recently been leveled at the “natural” food movement after being a part of it for many years, and I am excited to find a source of legitimate scientific inquiry to help answer some of my questions. I’m going to go with rice or soybeans as my favorite crop and thanks for the good work.