The example I like to use is roses.
Roses come in almost every color except blue (and black). We've worked very hard to breed all sorts of roses: climbers, shrubs, long-stem, tea roses, scented, and on and on. But in true human fashion, we want the one we don't have, and that's a blue rose. A true blue rose. We can't get them naturally, roses don't carry the gene(s) necessary to be bred blue on their own.
So of course, when genetic modification became real, one of the first projects started, and in fact still ongoing, is to create a blue rose. Efforts have been ongoing for about forty-something years now, and not from small labs. The first one to the finish line will have the patent on the color [yes, rose colors are patented] and the process. They will make money hand over fist. Not to mention the progress it will represent in the entire field.
40+ years.
[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A photo depicting a smiling Japanese woman with two large bouquets of Suntory's "Applause" roses, which are a lavender-grey color]
Closest we've gotten. And these make money, don't get me wrong. They're beautiful. But they're purple. Lavender. Technically blue, in the sense that "purple" doesn't exist in horticulture. (Thus why in the rhyme, "violets are blue")
"But when I put 'blue roses' in a search engine -"
Those are either photoshopped, or they're white roses that have been dyed blue. It's a really easy process. Florists do it all the time for specialty requests. It's so commonly done it even comes in spray paint form. They don't grow that color. They cannot grow that color.
(Yes, whatever one you think is real is photoshopped or dyed. Yes, I'm sure.)
All that work, from some of the best labs in the world. Decades of work. Absolute dedication to the task, the science needed being created just to do this, this one thing, make a rose blue. And we still can't do it.
Biology isn't just full of coconuts; biology is full of uncooperative coconuts who can react in entirely unpredictable ways to our meddling.
