Asklemmy

43879 readers

1490 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

What is a genetic modification that would cause a massive chain reaction to possibly horrific effects? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by doomsdayrs@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Let's keep things simple two rules.

No giving sentience, This is a no brainer issue.
Let's keep it to beings under the Animilia kingdom. "mutated virus/bacteria" is a common trope.

To start:

Let's modify ants to have lungs.

Most insects are constrained by the amount of oxygen they can acquire through their exoskeleton.

Imagine how big they can get if they didn't have that constraint?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 16 points 1 week ago (4 children)

In a push to deal with micro plastics, bacteria are developed to be able to break down plastic. Eventually, it gets into the plastic installed for a purpose and starts breaking that down.

[–] Zahille7@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Damn I thought you were gonna say it gets into our bodies and eats us as we're becoming part plastic nowadays.

That's a horror movie premise right there.

[–] satans_methpipe@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think that's the basic plot to Andromeda.

[–] infinite_ass@leminal.space 4 points 1 week ago

It took the world a million years before it figured out how to digest cellulose. It used to be like plastic. Just piled up.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I thought I read about this for real a while back? In a bid to make plastic decay faster, make it out of cellulose with embedded bacteria that can break it down. It still happens too slowly for most plastic packaging

[–] doomsdayrs@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

bacteria are not animals.