Genetically modified poplar trees being designed for soil cleaning

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/335572_transgenic16.html

And some of the researchers, not incidentally, have been firebombed for make the effort. Splicing and dicing genetic material has already been happening for centuries in the form of developing particular breeds of dog and cat (i.e. pitbulls verses collies and main coons verses tabbies and Russian blues) but these modifications have been through traditional hybridization breeding. So people feel quite a bit more comfortable with that because mutations that can't survive won't. Developing new variations on species may provide a big "yuck" factor not just becasue the artificial nature of the hybrid is so apparent but also because it goes against all normal statistically proven ways of arriving at hybrids or new species, e.g. conventional microevolutionary processes leading to new speciation.

In terms of theology this would seem to go back to the prohibition against mixtures of crops but since in Christ the law was considered abolished and fulfilled at the same time how does a Christian investigate this matter? On the one hand Jesus fulfilled the purpose of the Law and set aside as an obstacle barring entry of the Gentiles into God's kingdom so doing. It may be there is a purpose to such laws that is preserved even though the law itself is no longer an impediment to Gentile entry into the kingdom of God.

Deut 22:

6 If you come across a bird's nest beside the road, either in a tree or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on the young or on the eggs, do not take the mother with the young. 7 You may take the young, but be sure to let the mother go, so that it may go well with you and you may have a long life.

9 Do not plant two kinds of seed in your vineyard; if you do, not only the crops you plant but also the fruit of the vineyard will be defiled.
10 Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.
11 Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together.

These are the passages that, conceivably, might prohibit genetic engineering. The extrapolation is rather broad and probably forced, though. On the other hand, it is a pattern that can be extrapolated from these. Verse 9 warns that any intermingling of crops within a vineyard defiles all the fruit of the vineyard. It was against Mosaic law to plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together, which implicity argues that only two oxen should be yoked together. The matter that clothes of wool and linen woven together probably speaks for itself as a prohibition but conceptually the verse cumulatively speak against treating things as though they could be intermingled against their normal pattern.

In this respect a person could make the case that dog breeding does not violate the principle behidn these laws because dogs are simply being bred after their kind. hybridization of crops within a family would not be considered bad but interpolating genetic material from a rabbit into a tree would. INterestingly scientists have said they interpolated the rabbit gene because they have been unable to locate the gene within the tree's genome itself that performs a similar function. Would Christians object if scientists figured out how to activate the tree's own genetic capability of filtering toxins or would this still be playing God? I can see how both might be the case.

Conversely, if the tree is having its own genetic material shuffled or activated or deactivated or reactivated to cleanse the soil would that be wrong? Would it be wrong on principle or wrong because it could be considered a substitute for polluting less. Besides not polluting less could we genetically re-engineer the world to purify the environment of the toxins we pour into the world around us? If that's the case then I suppose a century from now Miyazaki's manga Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind could still be pertinent to these ethical debates, since Nausicaa must in the end confront the grim reality that the world she is trying to save was genetically re-engineered from the ground up by long lost generations of men not only to cleanse the world of the pollution humanity but to run its course and then self-destruct so that the humans who polluted the world to begin with could come back and reclaim it as their own. For a comic book two decades old it poses some ethical questions that are still pretty interesting (questions that really never come up in the anime).