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Hybrid Vigor
| Nothing good can come from inbreeding, we have been told. But were it not for inbreeding of crop lines, humanity might have run out of food already. In 1908, George Harrison Shull of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory showed that two inbred lines of corn could be combined to make a plant that was not only healthier than its inbred, shriveled parents, but also bigger and faster-growing than the healthy plants that were combined to make the inbred lines.
This is known as hybrid vigor. Offspring of crossbreeds usually do not exceed their parents consistently in size or growth rate. Yet oysters can and do, suggests research by Dennis Hedgecock’s group at USC. That may someday make them the Corn of the Sea. – C.M.
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