A Research On Selective Breeding Essay

Everyone has heard of the bulldog. There are English bulldogs, French bulldogs, and many more. What if someone were to tell you that because of selective breeding, your precious pooch may be in danger. Selective breeding is something that breeders do to get the best looking dogs. Breeders do this for show dogs and for sport dogs but in the the bulldogs case it is very dangerous. Bulldogs are now faced with a decreased lifespan, more health problems, and is leading to less of a species variety. Even though selective breeding is great to keep certain traits out of the way, in the bulldogs case, it could be disastrous.

Genetic diversity allows the population to adapt to changing environments and it contributes and adds to the gene pool.

Sexual selection was an idea proposed by Darwin and refers to the process in which males and females attempt to maximize their chances of reproductive success. Within a species there are certain characteristics that make individuals attractive to potential mates. An example of this is in peacocks, female peacocks are attracted to males with long brightly colored tails, even though this makes them easier to be spotted by predators. This characteristic then evolves within the species due to how males with this characteristic have a higher chance of reproductive success and their characteristics being passed on to surviving offspring.

I support the guidelines outlined by Kitcher for the use of genetic information because of their responsible and ethical nature. I believe that future generations will benefit as a direct consequence of these guidelines. I shall begin by defining eugenics as the study of human genetics to improve inherited characteristics of the human race by the means of controlled selective breeding.

Humans have been manipulating genetic transfer for over 10,000 years since our hunter- gatherer ancestors began to settle in one place and started farming and planting crops. Those humans observed and chose organisms from natural selection to select and breed organisms that showed characteristics desired by them and this began the process of selective breeding. Selective breeding favours recessive alleles that do not persist in wild populations. Selective breeding is a process of increasing the frequency of rare and recessive alleles so that they appear in homozygous form. This has the effect of eliminating the alleles for wild type from the population and the process of domestication has become irreversible. The domestic species has become dependent on humans for their survival. It is from these domestic species that humans have selected and breed favourable genetic traits for their benefit, be it higher yield in plant crops, sweeter tasting fruit, and more milk from dairy cows or ease of handling stock, selective breeding continues to be used today.

Artificial selection – a breeder that selects desired traits for a species and then breeds that species to have those traits.

Many people are familiar with the words natural selection, an idea that was popularized by Darwin in the 19th century; to simply define it, natural selection is nature’s editing mechanism that results in the favoring of some individuals over others when exposed to certain environmental factors. Artificial selection parallels the process of natural selection but with an added twist: the involvement of human beings. Artificial selection is “a process in which humans consciously select for or against particular features in organisms” allowing “only organisms with the desired feature to reproduce or may provide more resources to the organisms with the desired feature” (Artificial Selection, n.d.).

Selective breeding also could cause a decrease in biodiversity due to inbreeding. Inbreeding is the production of breeding between closely related individuals [2] and is used as it increases the chance of having favourable alleles and desirable phenotypes in the offspring. However, due to the individuals close genetic relations to one another this can cause many problems for the biodiversity of the population of dairy cows. Traits that may be disadvantageous now will be continuously chosen against during genomic selection and embryo transfer as the DNA is being scanned and checked for undesirable traits. However, this disadvantageous trait may become an advantageous trait in the future but it will be lost through the generations of selective breeding against it and are difficult to get back. As a result, this affects the evolution of the species as a whole because they develop and change to suit the desirable traits chosen which results in the undesirable traits being lost altogether.

I believe that human selection, whether implemented through genetic engineering or through the selection of embryos, should be used by parents only in consideration of the health of their offspring.

“If no such variations exist, the population rapidly goes extinct because it cannot adapt to a changing environment” (O’Neil, 1998-2013). Scientists call this reproductive success. “Within a specific environment context, one genotype will be better than another genotype in survival or reproduction for certain reasons having to do with the way its particular features relate to the environment or relate to other organisms within the population” (Futuyma, 2000-2014). The theory of evolution is explicable through various kinds of scientific research.

Offspring that possess favorable traits are more capable of surviving into adulthood and thus reproducing. We know from genetics that there is an increased likelihood that their offspring would also possess that desirable trait. The population of individuals possessing the trait would increase as more individuals possessing the trait survived to reproductive years, and fewer without the trait did not. Natural selection can help prevent a species from going extinct if they were to face adverse conditions that

The definition of eugenics is to breed out undesirable traits. Based off of Austrian scientist Gregor Mendel’s studies, eugenics is accomplished through selective breeding. Dominant traits would replace recessive traits and the law of dominance would be ineffective. Originally, the idea behind eugenics was not completely bad. Over time though, problems surrounding it have been found. Dealing with positive and negative traits, questions have been asked about what constitutes as a negative trait and who decides which traits are

This doesn’t directly chance the frequency of alleles within the gene pool, but the new member may have a unique combination of characteristics so superior to those of other members of the population that the new member will be much more successful in producing offspring. Furthermore, In a corn population, for example, there may be alleles for resistance to corn blight (a fungal disease) and to attack by insects. Corn plants that possess both of these characteristics will be more successful than corn plants that have only one of these qualities. They will probably produce more offspring (corn seeds) than the others, because they will survive fungal and insect attacks. Thus, there will be a change in the allele frequency for these characteristics in future generations.

Technology has been getting more and more advanced meaning that scientists have access to more advanced equipment and can conduct more complicated experiments. Scientists have found ways of enhancing and changing the genetic makeup of organisms when they are forming making it possible to customize and choose different traits and features about an organism’s physical appearance. This is very useful for farmers as they can breed their animals to have a certain trait or characteristic. For example, a farmer may want a muscly cow so with today’s studies it is possible to collect the semen from their muscliest bull and choose the strongest sperm then artificially inseminate an egg from their muscliest cow to produce a muscly calf. They can then repeat this procedure once the calf grows up and eventually over a couple of generations of this they will end up with a very muscly cow. This is called artificial

Gene pool is the total number of genes of every individual in an interbreeding population ("Gene pool," 2008). A large gene pool indicates high genetic diversity, increased chances of biological fitness, and survival ("Gene pool," 2008). A small gene pool indicates low genetic diversity, reduced chances of acquiring biological fitness, and increased possibility of extinction ("Gene pool," 2008). Gene pool increases when mutation occurs and survives. Gene pool decreases when the population size is significantly reduced (e.g. famine, genetic disease, etc.) ("Gene pool," 2008). Some of the consequences when gene pool is small are low fertility, and increased probability of acquiring genetic diseases and deformities ("Gene pool," 2008). Gene pool gives an idea of the number of genes, the variety of genes and the type of genes existing in a population ("Gene pool," 2008). It can be used to help determine gene frequencies or the ratio between different types of genes in a population ("Gene pool," 2008).