03-01-2015, 05:24 AM
"This is why there is less than a 1% success rate of creating the desired specimen."
There is probably a much smaller chance of success in conventional breeding of "creating the desired specimen." Obviously with a technique as, well, scatter-shot as a gene gun many resultant plants may be discarded simply because the introduced gene did not get located where it would do any good rather than any danger.
As Wnk may or may not be aware, conventional breeders typically create thousands of seedlings to obtain one or a few desirable varieties. As an example of cisgenic gene transfer, in one of Richard Ha's blog entries a tomato researcher stated that geneticists know which genes control flavor, aroma, and structural aspects of tomatoes. But with the torches and pitchforks out for GMO breeding she was essentially stuck conventionally breeding thousands of tomato seedlings to hopefully finally come up with the combination of characteristics from the essentially random combinations of parent plant chromosomes.
And, yes, you can create undesirable characteristics in plants with conventionally breeding. They do discard thousands of those conventionally bred experimental seedlings in the course of development.
There is probably a much smaller chance of success in conventional breeding of "creating the desired specimen." Obviously with a technique as, well, scatter-shot as a gene gun many resultant plants may be discarded simply because the introduced gene did not get located where it would do any good rather than any danger.
As Wnk may or may not be aware, conventional breeders typically create thousands of seedlings to obtain one or a few desirable varieties. As an example of cisgenic gene transfer, in one of Richard Ha's blog entries a tomato researcher stated that geneticists know which genes control flavor, aroma, and structural aspects of tomatoes. But with the torches and pitchforks out for GMO breeding she was essentially stuck conventionally breeding thousands of tomato seedlings to hopefully finally come up with the combination of characteristics from the essentially random combinations of parent plant chromosomes.
And, yes, you can create undesirable characteristics in plants with conventionally breeding. They do discard thousands of those conventionally bred experimental seedlings in the course of development.