Unfortunately, our school system of education emphasizes exact sciences, often completely forgetting about the natural sciences. As a result, the vast majority of school graduates are completely unaware of the basic principles of biology. It would seem that it’s okay: after all, we don’t often encounter it in our daily lives ... However, this is not so. For example, do you know what hybridization is? Is this a natural or human-made process? Why is it needed and is it not dangerous for us?
But as a result of ignorance of such elementary truths, various offices that produce “miracle drugs”, “natural food products” and other nonsense are widespread and flourishing, emphasizing (among other things) the absence of hybrid organisms in their products. Let's try to understand these burning issues in more detail.
To begin with, hybridization is a completely natural biological process. Hybridization is the process of obtaining a hybrid: an organism obtained by mating or pollinating two different species. It is natural and artificial. Of course, as a result of the natural process, viable organisms that can produce prolific offspring are much more often obtained.
There are several reasons for this. As a rule, natural (natural) hybridization is the process of crossing two closely related species or subspecies. This occurs quite often, often leading to the extinction and assimilation of one of the parent species. An ideal example of such a process is the absorption of island animals by close species from the mainland when they were intentionally (with the help of a person) or accidentally entering there. Endemics are quickly “swallowed” by more aggressive and powerful relatives.
However, in some cases, the same process can lead to the formation of a completely new species. This is possible, again, in the case of a certain population falling onto an island or other inaccessible place. For a long time, when representatives of the same species from the mainland occasionally fall into this population, the appearance of a new subspecies or even a species of animals or plants. It takes a lot of time, but that's how endemics came about. In this case, hybridization is a push mechanism of speciation.
However, much more often this process is artificial. The reason for this is that people are extremely interested in creating species that have certain characteristics. This type of hybridization has been known since antiquity. That is how many varieties of cereal plants, cattle and horses were bred. We can say that mankind is highly indebted to hybrids, since they possessed higher productivity and better economic qualities, which ultimately predetermined the development of agriculture and science.
At present, hybridization of somatic cells is becoming more widespread : this is the process of crossing two non-sex cells of completely different species. For example, this is how you get a hybrid mouse with a frog. This method is used not only to study the prospects of cell engineering, but also to develop new drugs.