Artificial Selection

Artificial Selection; It comes in ways some of us could never think of. Artificial selection is the selective breeding carried out by humans to alter a population. It is a procedure often used in agriculture: artificial selection has been used to alter the number of eggs laid by hens, the meat properties of bullocks, and the milk yield of cows. It has resulted in plants that are more disease-resistant, cows that produce more milk, and racehorses that run faster.

Altering the gene pools of dogs is another more popular technique used in artificial selection, it allows us to choose a dog's hair colour, length, ear length, bone structure, muscle mass, and more! The possibilities are endless:

(top row- Alaskan Malamute, Basset Hound, Llasa Apsa;

Middle row- Beagle puppy, Shar Pei, Chow)

There is a fault within the artificial selection process; if we continue to select a certain gene in dogs for example, within time, the variation between dogs would be obsolete. No more german sheppards or golden retrievers... just pugs. So if we do happen to end up with just pugs or any one kind of dog, the bottleneck effect could occur. This is when an event in which a population’s size is greatly reduced. When this happens, genetic drift may have a substantial effect on the population. In other words, when the population size is radically reduced, gene frequencies in the population are likely to change just by random chance and many genes may be lost from the population, reducing the population’s genetic variation. All in all, a disease could appear for these pugs, and one of them could inherit the disease, causing the rest of the generations to suffer and possibly become extinct.

I always knew pugs were trouble...

Artificial selection gets deeper and more complex as we proceed. Chickens are beings artificially produced so that they grow faster and bigger than regular chickens. They are also being altered so that they are featherless which makes it easier for corporations to work faster in producing food and getting it to the consumer faster. Although the job is done faster, a featherless chicken is more prone to diseases and viruses.

Altered, featherless,fast growing, stronger, more egg-producing CHICKEN.

Artificial Selection is good in a lot of aspects! Choosing the genes which are least likely to lead to easy entry of viruses can be good for most habitats and species. Artificial selection in plants can eventually and hopefully lead to pharmaceutical and medical discoveries. Experiments have resulted in allowing us to speed up the growth of animals and plants, even changing their colours!

Belgian Blue cow. The defect in the breed's myostatin gene is maintained through linebreeding

and is responsible for its accelerated lean muscle growth

Researchers at the USDA have selectively bred carrots with a variety of colors.

Here is a video on the general idea of artificial selection through time:

That is all for today! In conclusion, I think it should be ethically alright to tamper with selection in animals and plants, but if it keeps viruses, diseases, and other bad traits away then it should be a plus for the world.

-Girgis

Bibliography:

http://www.youtube.com/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_selection
library.thinkquest.org/C0118084/.../artificialselection.htm
www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/.../Artificial_selection.asp

Blogs Commented On:

RJ Aparato (comments don't work... this is my post)

http://rjsbioblog.blogspot.com/

Hey RJ, those belgium cows are really, REALLY big! You know even though they are genetically altered to have more meat, most people consider more meat a bad thing. But the meat in these "belgium blues" actually contains less cholesterol and calories. Another point is that when you said us humans usually eat just cows,pigs,lamb, or chicken I thought it was a really good point! It's kind of true, well in my area at least. In other areas of the world like Asia or Africa this might not be the issue, but in Canada and America, it applies very well. So what is the problem with altering our sources of food in order to create a healthier and good environment that meets our daily needs? Well that's basically it, good job on the blog.

Timothy Vasquez

http://bioblogtvasq.blogspot.com/

Babies: Make Them... and Design Them Too! (results may vary)

“Designer babies” is the term being used by the media to describe the future of modifying or selecting our children’s genes for desirable characteristics (medical and cosmetic). Are things getting out of hand with our research into genetic processes?







Note: This is NOT a designer baby.

You may ask yourself; what is a designer baby? Well, let me tell you! Advanced reproductive technologies allow parents and doctors to screen embrdisorders and select healthy embryos.

The fear is that in the future we may be able to use genetic technologies to modify embryos and choose desirable or cosmetic characteristics. Designer babies is a term used by journalists to describe this frightening scenario. It is not a term used by scientists.

I'll begin by talking about the ethics of this. Being Christian, I think that this is extremely unethical in regards to religion. God creates every human being in His own image and what He sees is good. Although we see black-white colour-blindness as a bad thing, an example would be for example, a child born with black-white colour blindness will see everyone as equal, unlike society today, and will thus have a completely different outlook on life other than if the child was designed to have colour vision. In the end, it's not up to us to change that, as God has plans for everyone and wants that specific person to follow a corresponding path in life.

Back to business; modifying the genes of the baby might not be bad all the time. If heart disease has a contained history in a family, then one should consider screening emrbryos and selecting the healthiest one.

The fact is, we CAN choose a baby's sex. There are two methods to choosing the sex. The first method involoves sorting out a sample of the father's sperm and dividing the males and females. Then bonding the sperm with the egg.

In most countries, one is only allowed to select their child's sex due to certain diseases linked to a certain sex.

Random Fact

Did you know that in England, it is illeagal for parents to choose a baby's sex due to the fact that they want either a boy or a girl?

Scientists although are somewhat new to experimenting with human genetics for the first time ever, any mistake can result in the possible destruction of the gene pool on the planet earth. Otherwise, if all goes well, we could very well have millions of "perfect" humans running around. In the near future, I wonder if parents will be able to choose a child's IQ level or even the child's personality.

One thing I strongly oppose to is that us human beings, find certain traits to be more attractive than others; height, hair colour, eye colour, skin colour... After parents begin to design their babies worldwide, it will begin to feel like a racial cleansing, or an inverted genocide if you will. Parents will soon begin to pick the traits that they think are more attractive rather than ones they don't, and in the future, certain traits may not be accessible anymore!

The price for choosing you baby's sex? A whopping $19,000 (USD). People from all over the world are travelling to the states to choose their baby's gender. This luxury service may cost a lot now, but like almost every other service in this world, don't you think the price will drop so that an average family can afford it in the future? I believe so, I believe almost every clinic will be offering this service in the future!

So what's your final decision on Designer Babies? I think designer babies are just wrong. I mean, you have a good chance at getting a boy, or a girl, and you're going to love your child either way; so why choose?

Girgis OUT.

SOURCES USED:

Bionet, "What is a designer baby?". Bionet. 2006

http://www.bionetonline.org/english/content/db_cont1.htm>.

Agar, Nicholas. "Designer Babies: Ethical Considerations (ActionBioscience)". BioScience. 2000-2010 www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html>.

D. Lemonick, Bjerklie, and Park, Michael, David,and Alice. "Designer Babies - TIME". TIME. 1999 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989987,00.html.>

BLOGS COMMENTED ON:

RJ Aparato

comment on RJ's blog (wouldn't allow me to post)

Your reflection on Gattaca really broadened my perspective on designing babies... It seems like almost everything the movie has been saying might come true. For example, perfect people deserve jobs, and soon enough regular old people like us will soon become "obsolete" in the modern world. The statement about how the sexual act may be considered old school in the future could be possible now that all we need to make a baby is sperm, which is then coloured with dye to see which is and X or Y chromosome and is then attached to the mother's egg. Overall I think your blog has a lot of good points and some new ones I didn't even know about like GATTACA.

-Girgis

Timothy Vasquez
http://bioblogtvasq.blogspot.com/2009/09/humans-invasive-or-stewards.html#comments

Humans; The Invasive Species

Question:

Many scientists consider humans as the most invasive species, as humans can greatly change and environment and impact living things that reside there. Are we being stewards of the world? Take a look at an issue in which human intervention has positively or negatively affected the biodiversity of our ecosystems.

Although we may notice it, human actions are changing the world every single day. little by little, we are affecting biodiversity. changes in biodiversity are 50 times more rapid than they were in any other years in human history.

A key topic that should be considered is invasive species. Humans are not the only invasive species on earth, although we may be trafficking species to places where they don't belong. Let me explain:

When we travel by air, or by car, or even when we send packages by boat, we may be trafficking species into another part of the world without even knowing it. The species will then begin to take over the land and might even adapt to the conditions. They might over-power current species by over-populating, and that is just one way that we have been contributing to the infamous cause that is extinction.

English Ivy climbs up trees, weighing down branches, therefore threatening tree health.

What else are humans doing to harm the planet? Let's take a look:
Deforestation. For those of you which have forgotten, (hopefully none), Deforestation is the destruction of forests to make land for agriculture. Cutting down trees, which provide oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide, is seen as a cause of increased greenhouse effect.

The Amazon forest is one of the largest remaining rainforests in the world. It is home to more than half the species on earth, and deforestation is occuring in it to this day. Humans feel the need to cut down trees for paper, furniture, and other material things which can easily be substituted for. Many plants and animals in the Amazon only live in certain areas, near certain types of trees, and different types of plants are reasons for why they live in a certain area. Deforestation can easily wipe out the biodiversity on earth just by cutting down trees which may be the habitat of many types of species.

Deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest

Humans affect biodiversity in many, many ways. Some of which include agriculture, fishing, forestry, urbanization, and manufacturing. For example, through agriculture, soil erosion is caused. This causes natural vegetation to be removed from its natural location and makes it an invasive species! Loss of native habitat in Canada due to farming has been significant: we have lost more than 85% of shortgrass prairie, 80% of mixed-grass prairie, 85% of aspen parkland and almost all our native tallgrass prairie.1

This illustration describes human economic activities and how they affect biodiversity

Now that you understand the consequences of not being responsible as humans, I'd like to present one final image that links people's effects on biodiversity.

It's a never ending cycle, economic growth leads to overconsumption, which requires development... and as we progress as humans, even though we may be inventing new things, or building larger sky scrapers, we need to remember that even though we are accomplishing something as humans, we are affecting the biodiversity of animals on earth. We are basically endangering ourselves.

It's up to you. Start getting involved and try your hardest to make a difference :)

Resources:

http://redpath-museum.mcgill.ca/Qbp/3.Conservation/impacts.htm

http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/biodiversity.html

https://www.google.ca/ (for some images)

Posts on other blogs:

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1. http://redpath-museum.mcgill.ca/Qbp/3.Conservation/impacts.htm#agriculture