Plum, cherry, and potato (leaf) tomatoes

[simplycurious]

...aren't actually a combination of the two. Although it got me thinking (which can be a very dangerous undertaking) but what if I were to take a lemon seed and a lime (seed? how does one plant a lime baby? ) and plant them, would they become one through the MAGIC of osmosis? Then I would have a 'limon' right? Or maybe it would be a 'leime', yeah, I like lieme. It has a nice ring to it. I feel like Frankenstein, creating things, haha. Please tell me this is going to work!

[rainbowgardener]

Not going to work!!

Hybridizing works by cross pollination, not by magic, osmosis, being planted near etc. And outside of a laboratory, it only works WITHIN species. Part of the definition of being separate species is that they cannot ordinarily cross breed with each other.

Lime and lemon are both citrus but not the same species (lemon is citrus limonium and lime is citrus aurantifolia). Therefore even if you had a lime tree and a lemon tree and you carefully transferred pollen from one of them to blossoms of the other, you would be unlikely to be able to produce limons (even though in spanish limon is sometime used indiscriminately for both).

Yes all citrus fruit reproduce from seeds.

You were kidding, right?

[simplycurious]

I was only half-way serious. If you would have told me that it *might* work, then I would try it. But since they are two different species, it won't work. Dang. I suppose that would be like trying to make a CatDog, right?

[rainbowgardener]

yup

the recombinant DNA folks can do it with extremely sophisticated micro-laboratory techniques, but not the rest of us.

[simplycurious]

So the super-technologically-advanced scientists can make a CatDog? Weeeiiiirrrrrrdddd. Mr./Mrs. Scientist, if you're reading this, please for the love of Mother Nature, do not do that. Kthx.

[rainbowgardener]

yup ... get quickly in to very scary stuff when you start looking into it.

I don't know that the cog-dat has been created yet, but it is at least very close to in the realm of what we can do.

We have Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's) to get plants to produce the Bt toxin and to produce a variety of biopharmaceuticals and biofuels. We get bacteria to produce human insulin. We have inserted the gene for producing the green fluorescent pigment protein in a variety of animals, so we have glow in the dark goldfish, pigs, cats, and marmosets.

The GloFish is a patented[78] brand of genetically modified (GM) fluorescent zebrafish with bright red, green, and orange fluorescent color. Although not originally developed for the ornamental fish trade, it became the first genetically modified animal to become publicly available as a pet when it was introduced for sale in 2003.[79]

We have "enviropigs" that digest phosphorus better than usual. We have dairy cows that produce human breast milk or at least milk that is very similar to human breast milk, not cow's milk.
wikipedia article on genetically modified organisms

A major milestone in chimera experimentation occurred in 1984, when a chimeric geep was produced by combining embryos from a goat and a sheep, and survived to adulthood.[14] Rat-mouse chimeras have also been created. The geep:

[img]https://s3.amazonaws.com/readers/2010/11/17/sheepgoatchimera_1.jpg[/img]

experiment in 2003, during which Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs.[1] [these hu-bit cells were only allowed to live for a few days]
wiki articles on chimeras and parahumans


In 2006, a pig was engineered to produce omega-3 fatty acids through the expression of a roundworm gene.[55]
Goats have been genetically engineered to produce milk with strong spiderweb-like silk proteins in their milk.[56]

[LA47]

That's scary!