Artificial Selection Benefits

“Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful, and most noble employment of man,” George Washington. Agriculture has been around for 12,000, this changed the lifestyle of people from hunting and gathering to permanent settlements with a steady food source (“Development of Agriculture”). From this, civilizations and cities grew, food could now be grown to meet the demands of the ever growing global populations. Since the development of agriculture advancement has been made to feed the population. One of the many modern advancements has been genetically modified organisms. Genetically Modified Organism, is the results of a laboratory process, where genes from the DNA of one of the species are extracted, and artificially forced into the genes of an unrelated plant or animal. Some of the unanswered questions about GMO’s have been what they are, companies that are involved,

Genetic engineering is the deliberate modification of the characteristics of an organism by manipulating its genetic material, otherwise known as DNA. Since biochemists Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer pioneered genetic engineering in 1973, the process has grown to have numerous applications such as medicine production, for example insulin (Mckinley). However, a main topic of concern is the application of genetic engineering on foods that we eat everyday. By modifying the genetic "blueprint" of crops, it is possible to improve many aspects of agriculture. But with any sort of scientific discovery that allows humans to act as Mother Nature, genetically modifying organisms has been a very controversial topic. Yet our society continues to grow, and the need for the benefits of genetically modified foods continues to grow. Genetically modifying foods should be permitted in our society because it allows larger yields of crops to be produced, produces foods with higher nutritional values, and reduces our global ecological footprint.

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.

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.).

Artificial selection could not only be good for the environment but can help people as well. From the article “Pros and Cons of Artificial Selection” they state, "Farmers who engage in artificial selection can create crops that are bigger, more plentiful, or more resilient to local pests. When more of a crop can be grown to completion on a regular basis, then this allows for more profits to be achieved.” If the farners where to cross-breed the species, it can create a new species, and could make one that hasn't been existed yet. The farmer could then sell this and make a great deal off of it. When related to a food chain, the artificial selection can live longer and grow to be more powerful. In the article they also explain, “Horses can become faster. Chickens begin laying eggs sooner or laying more eggs. Even cats or dogs can be bred through artificial selection for better companionship.” Artificial breeding will not only cause different types of breedings, but by doing so it can cause crops, animals, and even people to maybe even make there life easier. Lastly, another example of artificial breeding is that they can be used in every industry. There isn’t any plant that can’t get something out of the breeding process. If you pick animals that have the most beneficial traits, a life can be developed that is better suited to meet the needs of a changing

“We can change animals faster and in more profound ways than nature does on its own, but the point is that there’s inherently sacred about a species genome- it’s an amorphous, ever changing thing.”(Anthes, 48) One of the biggest controversies of biotechnology is that people are getting God-like powers seems how now scientists are able to engineer new traits into animals. Is that wrong? Morally, maybe. The fact of the matter is whether it’s immoral or not, we’ve been doing it for thousands of years, but now just faster and actually more efficiently. Scientists don’t plan on worsening animals or abusing them. “If you’re going to modify a line of animals, the resultant animals should be no worse off from a welfare point of view – and preferably better.”(Bernard Rollin) If nations eventually accept biotechnology more openly, and simply apply regulations stating that one cannot produce an organism that is not better off than it was before. That would ensure the protection of animals from unnecessary handicapped lives, and then the FDA would be more comfortable with allowing these biotechnological advances to be released to the

There is a current discussion on whether we should genetically modify the growth hormone gene that the Chinook salmon is naturally born with. AquAdvantage is currently working on getting their genetically engineered transgenic salmon FDA approved. Their scientists have been able to make the common Atlantic salmon be able to grow to over twice its natural size by inserting the growth hormone gene from the Chinook salmon into the Atlantic salmon, however, there are wider implications to take into consideration before making these transgenic salmon mainstream.

Selective breeding has been used for many years to achieve the expression of desired traits in animals and plants. Similar to natural selection, humans have developed artificial selection where humans select the most desirable traits instead of the environment, this is what’s known as selective breeding. But in fact selective breeding does not select for the fittest phenotype like in natural selection it actually selects for the most desirable phenotypes which may cause harm to the individual.

The Atlantic salmon was picked by AquaBounty Technologies to undergo genetic modification. The salmon has a growth hormone

As scientists are experimenting with many methods of gene selection, the livestock industry are relying more on genetic selection. Genetic selection allow the farmers to produce the most fertile and efficient livestock. There are many impacts of genetic selection. Genetic selection allows the farmers to genetically modify the breed of the livestock to that mass production can occur to fulfill the need of consumers. With genetic selection the quantity and quality of meat and dairy production has been increased. I was not familiar with the technique of artificial insemination for reproduction biology until I took this class. I learned that artificial insemination is also a technique of genetic selection which allows the scientist to decide what kind of livestock they want. Also, to improve in fur quality of animal, the genetic selection is in used. With genetic selection, scientist can now improve the production rate of cattle. Genetic selection can also improve the physical characteristics of the livestock. To keep up with the world’s need in beef and dairy production genetic selections have a huge impact. Nowadays, the agriculture industries have been vastly improved because of the advancement in the genetic selections. Genetic selections also allow the farmer to modify animal more for either meat or dairy production. For example, Boer goat has been genetically modified to gain

Humans and dogs have lived together for hundreds of years. They are treated differently all over the world; some countries like to modify dogs’ genes to whatever they want. Pure breeding dogs have been accepted by all of humanity. It is our way of perfecting or changing something natures given. Why not do that to humans as well? We could create a super human race to go out and rule worlds. Oh well if a few die off from the breeding, that’s just the cost of achieving what you want. An article about the negative aspects of inbreeding stated,” selective breeding, otherwise known as artificial selection. It’s the exact opposite of natural selection, and it completely disrupts the purpose of evolution.” (This vs. now). If it’s no issue sending

Some of the benefits or rewards for being able to use this technology are that as the world’s population continues to surge, so does the consumption of foods like seafood. GM foods, such as the salmon, provide a partial solution to not only support more people, but will also help preserve the remaining animals that have been overexploited and farmed (Zohar, 2010). Another benefit of GM salmon would be that it could save the industry millions of dollars in fish feed, while preventing loss in revenue do to diseased fish (Zohar, 2010). However with benefits follow the risks, which are what some consumer groups are focused on.

I think that genetically modified animal are a bad thing. Three reasons why genetical modification is bad for animals is, becuase it can cause suffering and early death of animal. It can also cause deformities, feeding and breathing difficulties, reduced swimming abilities and lower tolerance to disease for genetical modified salmon. We don’t need genetical modified animals to feed the growing world population. We already have enough food to feed 11 billion or more people. Those one some reasons why we don’t genetical modified animals.

There are two sides to the morality of genetically modifying animals for the purpose of pharming and xenotransplantation: the potential benefits and the reality. Although genetic modification of mammals carries promises of being able to use said modified mammals as a source of materials used in pharmaceuticals or creating mammalian species with organs that can be transplanted in humans, the reality is that reproductive cloning in mammals has a low success rate.

In today’s world we see a lot of beautiful cross-breed dogs that are product of selective breeding, in which cells are carefully picked in order to transform the genetic making of its cell by moving genes among species and thus creating new extra ordinary breed of dog such as, Pitsky, a mix of Pitbull and Husky, or Labsky which is a mix of Labrador and a Husky. This type of genetic engineering technique is also being used today in order to improve the production, characteristics, and life expectancy of plants and vegetables, the process is known as genetically modified organism or GMO. Genetically modified organisms within a plant gives an unimaginable benefits in terms of dealing with the worlds ongoing problem such as hunger, shortage of food supply with its ability to produce more harvest, and as well as to prolong its storage life. The changes in a genetically modified plants results in a change of its attributes making it chemical resistant, virus-resistant, herbicide-resistant (a chemical used to destroy unwanted weeds), delay ripening or in other cases add nutritional value (Schneider, K. Schneider R, Richard). This new found technology can have both potential benefit and harm to the human body, the agricultural system, as well as the natural resources.