ARE WE INTERRUPTING MOTHER NATURE?

Topic: Artificial selection has resulted in plants that are more disease-resistant, cows that produce more milk, and racehorses that run faster. One must wonder what will come next. In the blog entry answer the following question— under what circumstances should humans be artificially selecting plants or animals, if any?

The terms artificial selection, selective breeding and unnatural selection all have the same meaning— to alter the breed of plants or animals to achieve desired traits to benefit humans. With the objective of only producing the most desired qualities in plants and animals, artificial selection takes two members of the same species which possess dominant alleles for certain favourable genes and is crossed with each other. Since both of these members have dominant genes for the desirable characteristic, when they are cross-bred, the offspring will also show the desired characteristics. Now, this easily accomplished task known as artificial selection has been commonly used with animal breeding and in the fields of agricultural diversity for many years— making several advancements and even the creation of entirely different organisms.

Seedless grapes and watermelons are some frequently seen fruits modified by humans to make life more efficient. Obviously, Mother Nature would’ve wanted these fruits to carry on their seeds for subsequent generations but humans wanted seedless fruits so we artificially selected their genes. With humans interrupting the natural growth of plants, various plants are able to thrive even when it is not their peak season, since they are being modified to grow in specific conditions to fit the needs of humans. As well, completely different plants or vegetables commonly seen today could have originated from one wild plant found many years ago. For example, plant breeding began about 10 000 years ago with the domestication of wild plants into uniform and predictable plant species. Increased amounts of food were being produced to support the growing human population in southwest Asia and so seeds from native wild plants were being actively collected, planted and cultivated. The seeds from the best plants were deliberately selected for planting succeeding crops and then this cycle would be continued. Artificial selection has led to plant varieties that no longer look like the wild plants form which they originated. The wild ancestors of common vegetables such as tomatoes and corn are unrecognizable to almost everyone excluding plant biologists. The dramatic results of plant breeding can be seen in how a single common ancestor, the sea cabbage (Brassica oleracea) can be bred into six different vegetables such as broccoli, kohlrabi, ornamental cabbage, kale, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels sprouts.

If traits are not desired with certain plants, their species would not be given proper care (being provided with necessary fertilizers, protected with pesticides…etc.) and in return, the species wouldn’t be able to survive as well as they potentially could. Perhaps this could throw off the balance of nature with some species slowly fading away due to their unneeded traits. The use of artificial selection can cause an imbalance to the ecosystems— changing the ecosystems and making others adapt to the change…making life confusing and possibly destructive. Not to mention, some desirable traits we now want are lost due to artificial selection form previous generations. For example, Persian cats tend to be deaf and Gold Retrievers often suffer from hip problems; both these traits were produced accidentally from artificial selection. Also, it is possible that people have allowed bad traits to slip into crop plants: various species of plants are less insect and disease resistant than their wild ancestors. It is possible that people selecting for traits throughout history have already altered the genetic makeup of these plants as they have no knowledge of chemistry or biology. Lastly, another drawback of artificial selection would be how it relies on random mutations to produce new visible traits while producing new invisible traits such as new allergens. Even today, new allergens and poisons occasionally appear in food as a result of artificial selection.

Despite the restrictions of artificial selection, it is until recently, all we had. All crops and domestic animals are a result of mass breeding over thousands of years! Garden plants are also a result of artificial selection as they have been selected for prettier flowers which are more attractive to humans as well. Even “organic” crops have originated from the same thousand years of artificial selection— simply put, wild plants cannot sustain our large human populations. Today (early 20^th century to present) are much more sophisticated than the drawbacks we have experienced decades ago. Usually, biologists will attempt to improve large populations of plants and animals at once, rather than working on small numbers of organisms. This has allowed modern breeders to rapidly improve traits while preventing useful traits from being lost forever.

So, the debatable topic of artificial selection or “choosing the fittest” has clearly brought many opinions to the table. When people breed plants or animals, they choose the best survivors for future generations. I find nothing wrong in this as long as the breeder’s intentions are ethical and would not potentially cause harm to any of the species. As this technology has already been around for the thousands of years and hasn’t bothered me in any way, I don’t see any harm in artificial selection. Perhaps there could be an easier way to prevent the loss of precious genes during artificial selection in the future, but honestly, we’ve been living with artificial selection for so many years and it would be extremely hard to draw back from using this practice in our daily lives. If we were to intentionally stay away from artificial selection, we might be left with very little to work with in our world. With reasonable grounds, artificial selection can greatly benefit humans since it rarely harms humanity and can create a more efficient world for us to live in.

SOURCES:

http://images.google.ca/images?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbs=isch:1&q=artificial+selection&sa=N&start=40&ndsp=20

http://home.comcast.net/~lifebook/mass-breed.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_selection

COMMENTED ON:

http://priscillasbioblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/artificial-selection-has-resulted-in.html?showComment=1269304329698_AIe9_BGubpL1IBjh9UMGYcw9tf-nAi2K0JbmgD-8jIh8vd_J642Fsw3Gx7eAnDQmuZGyJidJlqPakeUgg6yxsiuuMFyB5Vnyv8gq8Gq4eNkZBN_s6nh3LrGO6PcNIiqpujcg6PHZTiJu6Oj2ak_9j6L4kpZPPHNQ9myhTT_0E55w0ZT57qKFtxqQpOSqrtzNWiCNOTl3Wu3b2Ndu4yqSrfX3iPvqNsTW1S5wXLnRPGSdTex1ccHqPpq29Ja-hzo0cnsN_cb_cr0v#c1846278352312040053

http://rosemarysbio.blogspot.com/2010/02/question-artificial-selection-has.html?showComment=1269304728720_AIe9_BED2Vjn4EzmcdFU-oiERw5j-lfo7EQZdrICj0KjypG5y__XBhXexjPa5zkqTLleH7884TtF-r30J8Y92noc7FDl7FfAmYX0EJIdn6-S6p5zS2OBWPV6UKKb7UItd-1NQLR_5IQpDMPM3BBq4LPYTALCE2BWuxzGmesNOzZEYJx-NgAwPVTRBckRActl9sNyxBM0JJ3d5_n58l6_pWGlGQetFLVClRZdeuuX4QzyoxJqF1eCLH0pgLorg-gcSeGSbKyFE18c#c2111063747621603716