What Is The Domestication Process?

From prehistoric period to the present time, plants and animals have been modified by breeding and natural selection. In the beginning of the human civilizations, human beings unconsciously started to create new forms of living beings denominated “hybrids”, crossing different individuals and species during the domestication process. According to Root (2007), an important example of domestication process can be illustrated by the dogs that arose from the wolf circa the 12,000. The canines, in general, were probably used as a helper during the hunting in the Neolithic communities.
Several lineages of organisms were created during the process of characteristic selection and a considerable practical knowledge was developed by breeders over the centuries. However, in the view of Hartl and Orel (1992), until the 1800’s, most of the process involving modification of living beings remained empirical, in other words, the variations were made by chance using crossings between individuals. At this point, two historical facts during the development of the genetic knowledge should be emphasized: the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 by Charles Darwin, and the advent of genetics with the work of the Augustinian monk, Gregor Mendel, in 1865.

The real applications for the society were initially seen in 1990, when the gene therapy trials on humans started for the treatment of incurable diseases. At this time, Scotland scientists announced the birth of a lamb (Dolly) cloned by nuclear transfer using a mammary cell from an adult sheep. This achievement shows that the humanity were able to clone a complex organism in the lab for the first time. Following this realization, several mammals were cloned and the many human genes were transferred to rats, monkeys and dogs creating the humanized animals. This kind of animals can be used in medical research with a model to study human diseases, for