How does natural selection affect phenotypes?

Answer 1

The phenotype of organisms determines the way they interact with one another and with their environment. The way organisms interact with one another and with their environment determines how well each organism is able to compete for resources and mates - what the chances are of that organism successfully raising fertile offspring, in other words. Such offspring will likely carry the genes that give them their parent's successful phenotype. So over the generations, the genes that produce such successful phenotypes will become more numerous in the population, causing a shift in the average of phenotypes towards this successful phenotype.

Answer 2

With genetic engineering, we can select the genes that we, humans, wants and discard those that we don't need. We speed the process of natural selection in some aspect but in other aspect we go against natural selection because those genes that we select might not be able to survive in the wild. This is why it's has been coined Artificial Selection.

Answer 3

Possibly. Remember, evolution is the change in allele frequency over time in a population of organisms. So, an artificially selected organism, selected by genetically engineering it germ line alleles, would pass on these changes in allele frequency and this would be evolution.

Answer 4

Teosinte to corn. All by artificial selection of plants, teosinte plants, that had certain mutations that growers found beneficial. Then these plants were mated, which is the natural genetic modification that lead, eventually, to corn. Corn evolved under the driver of artificial selection.

Now, we can modify plants directly in their genomes. Golden rice is one example of this. Vitamin A production increasing genes are inserted into the genome of normal long grained rice and this is a form of evolution drive by genetic modification. The alleles have changed in this plant, so evolution has occurred.

Answer 5

If genetic cures were discovered, we could stop diseases and afflictions altogether by giving the cure to the parent, and the offspring may have a better chance of fighting off the disease.

Answer 6

phenotype