The horrors of plant-animal hybridization

By at 5:18 am Wednesday, Feb 20

Xander Bennett says" "I recently stumbled across this fascinating article [by Lily Pepper] about plant-animal hybrids. It discusses a breaking down of traditional taxonomies, and the cultural fear of becoming plant-like."
Somewhere in Kansas, a crop of rice is growing whose DNA includes a couple of genes borrowed from the human genome. These genes make the rice plants produce a protein found in human breast milk. The rice is intended to be used to produce medicines for infants suffering from diorrhea and dehydration resulting from malnutrition. Rice, long a staple food for many, is being tailored to better meet the needs of the human animal in a changing world. Although humans have been modifying plant species for hundreds of years, genetic modification is a relation between human and plant that fills many people with visceral horror, particularly when the result is a hybrid of plant and animal.
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Mark Frauenfelder

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