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Agriculture giant Monsanto has licensed CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing technology from the Broad Institute for use in seed development, the company announced a step that will likely accelerate and simplify the creation of crops that are resistant to drought or have consumer-pleasing properties such as soybean oil with fats as healthy as those in olive oil.

But the deal comes with restrictions that speak to the startling power of CRISPR, as well as widespread public anxiety about genetically modified crops: Monsanto cannot use it for gene drive, the controversial technique that can spread a trait through an entire population, with unknown consequences.

The anti-GMO activist says, “ Selective breeding is natural, and splicing DNA from one organism to another is so, not?"

The rotifer’s DNA repair mechanism works in a similar way to groundbreaking CRISPR gene editing technology — it gets rid of the bad and replaces with the good.

So it’s all a matter of perspective. A rotifer would probably find genetic manipulation through sex to be wholly unnatural, and a little gross. Borrowing foreign DNA to incorporate into its own? That, it can get behind.