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Lesson: Chapter 20 — Heredity

20.7. Putting heredity to work 2 of 3

Question 2

No variety of a crop anywhere carries resistance to a particular disease. What can selective breeding do about it?

The right answer is the one marked above.

Nothing — it can only work with alleles the species already has. Selecting rearranges and concentrates existing alleles. It cannot make one that is not there.

That limit is exactly why genetic engineering exists: it can take a resistance gene from another species altogether.

Answer the question to continue.