Debunking A Myth

Myth: Genetic engineering is nothing more than an accelerated version of selective breeding.



This is a completely incorrect statement!!!

Selective breeding is a practice of breeding organism's with specific beneficial traits together in order to create better offspring. Scientists choose the traits they like in these animals and stimulate breeding in order to make the traits more prevalent in offspring. Selective breeding is a process that takes place over generations and generations. Also, selective breeding can only enhance characteristics that are already present in an animal.

For example, certain cows are used for beef production while others, dairy cows, are used to produce milk. Over generations of selective breeding, scientists and farmers have created "super cows" with a much higher muscle content than regular cows and, to the same extent, dairy cows which produce much more milk than average.

Genetic engineering is a much newer process than selective breeding. The cool thing about genetic engineering is that traits from two completely different organisms can be crossed.

Genetic engineering is also much more precise and quicker than selective breeding. Specific segments of DNA are altered to create desired characteristics in an organism. This allows scientists to choose the specific gene that they want expressed in an organism and introduce it (which is not to say that it always works).

The biggest difference between these two processes is that selective breeding is a form of natural breeding which is only capable of crossing two already closely related organisms, where genetic engineering is an artificial form of trait modification, with genes that can come from several different sources.