In an article published in Nature Biotechnology, Bruce Tabashnik and colleagues looked at the actual pattern of evolution of resistance to Bt toxin Cry1Ac in cotton over a 10-year period. They used studies conducted in Australia, China, Spain and the United States focusing on six pest species: Helicoverpa armigera, H. zea, Heliothis virescens, Ostrinia nubilalis, Pectinophora gossypiella and Sesamia nonagrioides. They found that in only one of these species - H. zea - had the frequency of resistance genes increased substantially.Go read the rest at Further Thoughts. HT: ResearchBlogging.org's feed, which is becoming an excellent resource.
Further Thoughts: Bt cotton and the evolution of resistance
In a very interesting post, Ian Ramjohn covers some interesting research about the evolution of Bt resistance in cotton pests.
8 Comments
teach · 24 February 2008
I used to teach a lab exercise on Koch's Postulates (which is the series of steps linking a pathogen to a disease) using tobacco hornworms and DiPel dust (Bt). We exposed the larva to Bt, dissected them and cultured the bacillus and then reinfected healthy hornworms. When I first started doing the lab many years ago, the hornworms (which were supplied by a company in North Carolina) died quite quickly from Bt infection and the lab was an excellent one. I stopped using hornworms about 3 years ago when I could no longer get them to die from exposure to Bt.
Henry J · 25 February 2008
But will the evolution deniers cotton to this new research? :p
Vince · 25 February 2008
Henry J · 25 February 2008
Well that was sheepish of them.
Pole Greaser · 25 February 2008
Why can't we just make sheep through mutations in cotton. If evolutionism was true, this should not be a problem since both wool and cotton are fabrics. This really shouldn't that many random mutations, should it?
JGB · 25 February 2008
Are you trying to make cotton, sheep, or wool? In your haste to be snarky you seemed to have confused which one was made up of protein and which ones were made up of cells capable of actually evolution.
David B. Benson · 25 February 2008
JGB --- The consensus is that poster Pole Greaser is a trouble-making troll posing as a creationist troll.
Best to ignore him.
KL · 25 February 2008