Commercial applications Selective breeding to enhance the most beneficial traits is the structure upon which agriculture is built, this expedited the evolution process to make crop plants and animals larger and more disease resistant. Genetic manipulation went further. Genetic alteration of plants leads to not only larger crop production, but also more nutritious products, allowing isolated populations to receive vital vitamins and minerals that would otherwise be unavailable to them. Utilization of these wild-type mutations has also led to plants capable of growing in extremely arid environments, making more of the planet habitable than ever before. As more is understood about these genes, agriculture will continue to become a more efficient process, which will be relied upon to sustain a continually growing population. Amplification of advantageous genes allows the best traits in a population to be present at much higher percentages than normal, although this practice has been the subject of some ethical debate. These changes have also been the reason behind certain plants and animals being almost unrecognizable when compared to their ancestral lines. See also Genotype Phenotype Crop wild relative References External links "Absence of the wild-type allele" – Pediatrics "Genetically-spliced bacteria may benefit agriculture" – Sarasota Herald-Tribune "Reading of DNA allows creation of synthetic vaccines" – Star News "A Curious Clue in Cats" – Newsday "A Genetically Engineered Agriculture Revolution?" – The Telegraph "Wild Type Learning Activity" "Wild-Type vs. Mutant" Classical genetics