The term “GMO” gets thrown around a lot, these days. Short for “genetically modified organism,” GMOs have been making headlines recently for the role they play in the global food chain.
In principle, the modification of genetic material in a laboratory is similar to the modification of genetic material practiced for millennia by farmers and the breeders of livestock. Selective breeding, a process which takes place over generations, is a process by which people choose organisms with desirable qualities for reproduction. In the case of animals, a famous example of selective breeding is the domesticated dog. Early humans carefully selected wild wolves that were more obedient and loyal than others. Those wolves were given advantages that their wild counterparts did not have the protection of people, food, and shelter, for example and were bred with other domesticated wolves to produce yet more domesticated wolves. Over time, these wolves became the dogs we know of today.
Many of the plants that have supported the rise of civilization had much more humble origins. The plant we know of today as corn high as an elephant’s eye actually started off as a tiny, grass-like plant. Desiring sweeter, juicier apples, farmers reserved the seeds of the best apples to plant the next season. Disliking the large seeds found in many fruit, such as bananas and watermelons, horticulturalists artificially promoted the dissemination of specific plants that exhibited the desired qualities -sometimes by growing cuttings of the original specimen, other times by cross-pollinating plants with different qualities.
In all circumstances, people took advantage of naturally occurring mutations that resulted in desirable changes in organisms; people simply helped these mutants gain a larger foothold in the world.
Modern science has accelerated the process of genetic modification and has unlocked the ability to combine genes across entirely different biological domains of life. To grasp the enormity of that statement, consider that plants, animals, and fungi are all part of domain eukarya, and that it is now possible to combine eukarya genes with genes from the other two domains bacteria and archaea.