what limits the possiblities of somatic fusion?

[frederick]

I heard about this technique a few months back at school, and I wondered how great it would be to get a hybrid out of, say, D. capensis and D. peltata. Now, I know it would be foolish of me to think I am the only one to have thought of this!

So my question is, what precisely sets a theoretical fantasy apart from a probably very complicated, but otherwise feasible feat of genetic manipulation? As far as I know, which is not much, somatic fusion is used primarily when sexual methods can't be used to cross 2 species together. Since the genus Drosera encompasses a large variety of very different species, different in size and growth patterns or reproduction, I wonder why is it that we do not see any D. capensis X peltata nowadays, considering they belong to the same genus and that somatic fusion exists (and quite certainly other methods as well that I do not know of)?

Thanks for any input, and sorry if this subject as been talked over already, I have a hard time using the search function on this board, which leaves me puzzled...

[Michael]

Hi Frederick -- we're always interested in hearing about ways to improve things - so we don't distract from your question, could you send me a PM or an email ([e-mail]) and tell me more about problems using the search function?

Mike

[ICPS-bob]

I agree that the Proboards search button is a bit quirky and I do not know how to make it work better. However, there is an alternative. Scroll to the bottom of any page and you will see a Google Search option. Be sure to click on the icps.proboards.com button. Enter your search word(s). For example, somatic, returns 6 hits (9 hits if you include the omitted results).

[frederick]

Thank you Michael for the help, I will resort to the tip ICPS-Bob juste gave me instead

Thank you for the tip Bob!