27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Norman Borlaug, Giga-Lifesaver
In the 1950s and ’60s, another giga-lifesaver, Norman Borlaug, outsmarted evolution to foment the Green Revolution in the developing world.21 Plants in nature invest a lot of energy and nutrients in woody stalks that raise their leaves and blossoms above the shade of neighboring weeds and of each other. Like fans at a rock concert, everyone stands up, but no one gets a better view. That’s the way evolution works: it myopically selects for individual advantage, not the greater good of the ...26 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Interest in Genetics of "Lesser" Animals Betrays our Conn...
Genetics has enticed a great many explorers during the past two decades. They have labored with fruit-flies and guinea-pigs, with sweet peas and corn, with thousands of animals and plants in fact, and they have made heredity no longer a mystery but an exact science to be ranked close behind physics and chemistry in definiteness of conception. One is inclined to believe, however, that the unique magnetic attraction of genetics lies in the vision of potential good which it holds for mankind rat...If we were not related to them, then there would be little scientific interest in exploring them.
20 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Examples of Species Evolved through Human Artificial Sele...
The dog can stand for the success of other breeding programs. As
Darwin noted in The Origin, “Breeders habitually speak of an animal’s
organization as something quite plastic, which they can model almost as
they please.” Cows, sheep, pigs, flowers, vegetables, and so on—all came
from humans choosing variants present in wild ancestors, or variants
that arose by mutation during domestication. Through selection, the
svelte wild turkey has become our docile, meaty, and virtually tasteless...Turkeys, corn, broccoli, tomatoes, etc, etc, all bred from wild species into their modern domesticated forms.