Question

Promoters of genetically modified organisms often make the remark that humans have been genetically modifying organisms for millennia, through artificial selection and breeding techniques. Detractors,however, argue that there is a qualitative difference between selective breeding and genetic modification, and that this difference is important enough to cause great concern.

Write an essay that will compare and contrast artificial selection and genetic engineering of crops. Your thesis should either argue that genetic modification is merely an extension of an ancient process, or that genetic modification is clearly different from artificial selection. Your thesis should also include the extent to which we should be concerned about our progress in this field.

Include:

-what each technology is and how it is achieved

-key similarities

-key differences

-an assessment on how each technology impacts biodiversity

-an assessment on how each technology results in humans impacting the environment in other ways (pesticide use, transportation, etc.)

-an assessment of the potential benefits and detriments of each technology

-if you use value judgements in your argument, as sense of where those judgments come from

Answer 1

Artificial selection is the technique used to select the breeds of the animals having superior and desired traits. The technique selects the parents with desired traits and breeds them to get the progeny having desired features of both of the parents. It has been done by farmers to improve the quality of crops and cattle. Breeding of cattle to produce the high quality milk producing cattle breed is one of the example.
Genetic engineering is the process of modification of genome of organisms. The process identifies the desired gene from the donor and transfer it into the host cell. It results in production of host progeny having the gene from the donor organism. E coli cell with human insulin gene is produced by genetic engineering.
Artificial selection is done by hybridization while genetic engineering includes isolation of gene, its insertion into the host cell followed by gene cloning.
Both techniques modify the genome of the organisms and produce the progeny having desired genes.
Artificial selection put the genes of related species together in progeny while genetic engineering put the genes of two very unrelated organisms together. Artificial selection is done by farmers through hybridization while GE is done in laboratory.

So, in nutshell, both techniques serve to challenge the natural biodiversity.  However, artificial selection is not a threat to biodiversity as the genetic engineering is.