That’s not quite what we’re looking for (or what DT seemed to be talking about) - we’re looking for horizontal transfer of genes between phyla.
That also is a different topic - endogenous retroviral insertion - great evidence of common ancestry, but not necessarily evidence of horizontal gene transfer (esp between phyla).
Whether it is common or not is not really important to this topic. I was confused because you were starting a new thread in this one.
It’s absolutely relevant. If gene transfer between phyla isn’t a common natural phenomenon, then the point about GMO being different from natural processes is a valid one.
(The conclusions people might draw from that difference may be ignorant or wrong, but the question we are addressing in this thread is why people treat GMO differently from other things)
Above, I was just providing cites for those examples by DT.
Yes, horizontal gene transfers is pretty common - even between different phyla. I thought this was fairly well known.
Barbara McClintock was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983 for her work with transposons. She did her work mostly with maize but other geneticists have demonstrated such horizontal gene transfer in other organisms via transposons or other related means.
Flatworms and hydra to/from insects
An argument that “that the introduction of transposable elements by horizontal transfer in eukaryotic genomes has been a major force propelling genomic variation and biological innovation.”
Even horizontal gene transfer between prokaryotes and eukaryotes (different kingdoms)
Nature has managed to do some weird things manipulating genes, so spurring it along with a dose of radiation isn’t likely to come up with a result unheard of in nature.
I realize there’s no way I’ll ever have a real pet kaiju, but you don’t have to rub it in.
GMO is treated differently because a somewhat successful campaign has been waged against the process. It’s new and it’s introduction to the public occurred in the context of environmentalists having become very effective at using the media and litigation to spread fear over processes and companies they do not like. They can’t really provide an effective argument against mutation breeding because it’s been around for more than half a century and probably the only people to ever suffer from it are the people who use the radiation and carcinogens to develop the mutants in the first place.
Neither the process for developing GMOs or the process for mutation breeding occur outside the laboratory. Yet the technology comes entirely from observations made of what living things are doing outside the laboratory. The very reason why these technologies are able to be effective is because they do not violate the rules that govern how genes can be a part of an organism and not kill it or cause it to fail to thrive. We are after all trying to engineer living things and so the very fact that it can occur in the laboratory means that some analogous process probably occurs outside of the laboratory.
Regardless, if people are actually concerned over safety issues with their food then they can test whether the food is safe and not make arguments concerning what is or is not found “commonly in nature” or what is or is not technology based on “natural” processes.
None of what you’re saying here has much bearing on anything I’ve said or argued. What do you actually think my position is on GMO?
Oh, I don’t personally care in the least bit about naturalness. I was just pointing out that to the crowd that values that sort of thing, that mutation breeding is ultimately more “natural” in a way that genetic engineering isn’t, in that it’s replicating a natural process, just like selective breeding does.
I wasn’t trying to make any kind of value judgement on it.