Living creatures integrate and evolve. A leading example is the way in which single-call organisms incorporated another type of organism, mitochondria, in the process of evolving into animal cells. Other examples include how sea slugs acquire a capacity for photo synthesis by ingesting chlorophyll from algae, and the mechanism by which children inherit dominant genes from their parents. Integration could be seen as one of the basic law of evolution.
Integration is an indispensable method in man-made design and innovation, too. Joseph Schumpeter once defined innovation as "new combination" (neue Kombination): in the field of human invention, integrating different things is the foundation of creating new ones.
An example of integration between the natural and artificial realms is genetic engineering.Humans have unlocked the secrets of DNA and reached a stage at which organisms can be equipped with new functions, as in the case of implantation of spider genes in coli bacteria to enable them to produce the same kind of thread as spider silk. However, the question of how new species with "hacked" DNA might impact their environments remains open; the future is unknown, and serious doubts remain.