3 ms·
Selective breeding is not the same as editing a genome. You cannot "selectively breed" a fish gene into a tomato.
by nickbauman 11y ago
Selective breeding is not the same as editing a genome. You cannot "selectively breed" a fish gene into a tomato.
- splawn 11y agosure you can, its all just DNA... it just takes waaay longer.
- Kalium 11y agoUhm. You can, in fact, selectively breed any given gene into any creature. You are, of course, aware that plant mutation rates has been accelerated with mutagens for decades in search of desirable changes. So while it may not be a gene copied directly from a fish, it will be a base-for-base identical copy of the gene found in a fish. Then it can be merged back into the main line of the plant via a recombinant backcross technique. This is how plant breeding has been done for quite a long time now.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> You cannot "selectively breed" a fish gene into a tomato. The actual results of breeding and natural selection, including particularly convergent evolution, suggest that its quite possible to achieve equivalent results to that by breeding, though the timescale required, if you are relying on natural mutation as your source of variation, might be very long. Which is why selection breeding techniques that kick up the pace of mutation with radiation or chemical mutagens are still competitive means of developing new desired traits in a world that has gene editing.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]