We are the world?

[Bruce Walsh]

Actually, the firewalls between species are extremely poor, at best, in
bacteria --- current estimates are that bacterial genomes have turned over
their genes about five times already, taking in genes from the environment
and using them.

Likewise, much of "traditional" breeding involves breaking firewalls ---
for example, we can cross two different species and get a sterile plant,
but if we make that plant a tetraplod by disrupting meiosis = viola!  most
of our current crops (some even involve matings between three, or more,
different species -- wheat for example).

Of course, one can always argue that these "racial barriers" should not
be breached, but simply look at the 1930's-40's to see what happens if one
is too strict about THAT viewpoint.

The bottom line is that most of the nonGM plants that are organically
grown are the result of wide-species crosses, crosses that are not "natural"
(i.e. would not occur in nature) and are forced by the breeder, who picks
out rare genotypes from crosses that mainly fail.

One wonders what the view of extremes "greens" would be regarding hybrid
corn in the 1930's.  Would this be seen an affront to nature?  After all,
since these are F1 hybrids, and the seed companies control the two
parental stocks, farmers must buy seed each generation.

What distinguishes species is selection against hybrids, which usually
are much less fit, due to all sorts of gene interactions.  Breeders work
hard to remove these interactions by backcrossing to one particular strain to
remove all the genes of one of the species except for those that improve
plant performance --- sort of like what is done with GM organisms, but
this requires a lot more generations (and hence a lot more land use and nasty
pesticides).

Peace

Bruce