Alex Goddard takes questions from the audience:

Question: In genetic engineering, you might be bringing in genes from a different species. Is that right? That hasn't been done before, except we're eating the stuff now.... The breeding has been going on for years and years and years....

Question: Is it possible that you could obtain the same effect with genetic engineering just through evolution? Genetic engineering has all the value of speed and directness; unfortunately it has bad press. The same thing could happen, only it would take a million years....

Question: Could this [exchange of genetic material] be something that occurred though evolution before the differentiation of species occurred so they no longer threatened each other...?

Question: At the end of your lecture, you were talking about using [the herbicide] Roundup to determine which plants accepted the selection and the desired trait. I'm assuming that, say if you were creating tomato plants, the Roundup is also included with the big trait that we're trying to get?

Question: If you can insert that gene into a bacteri[um], why can't you insert that gene into the plant itself?

Question: How does the engineer know that what he is creating wouldn't, in the future, [adversely] affect other plants or the people who ingest it?