Genetic Engineering Essay, Research Paper

Bioengineering, or genetic engineering is an altering of

genes in a particular species for a particular outcome.

It involves taking genes from their normal location in one

organism and either transferring them elsewhere or putting

them back into the original organism in different combinations.

Most biomolecules exist in low concentrations and as complex, mixed

populations which it is not possible to work efficiently. This problem

was solved in 1970 using a bug, Escherichia coli, a normally innocuous

commensal occupant of the human gut. By inserting a piece of DNA of interest

into a vector molecule, a molecule with a bacterial origin of replication, when

the whole recombinant construction is introduced into a bacterial colonies all

derived from a single original cell bearing the recombinant vector, in a short

time a large amount of DNA of interest is produced. This can be purified from

contaminating bacterial DNA easily and the resulting product is said to have been “cloned”.

So far, scientists have used genetic engineering to produce, for example:

+ improve vaccines against animal diseases such as footrot and pig scours;

+ pure human products such as insulin, and human growth hormone in commercial quantities;

+ existing antibiotics by more economical methods;

+ new kinds of antibiotics not otherwise available;

+ plants with resistance to some pesticides, insects and diseases;

+ plants with improved nutritional qualities to enhance livestock productivity.

Methods:

+ Manipulation of the Gene pool, which is related to Hybridization which is the breeding of species but the species are not the same but they are related.

+ Chain reaction is the production of many identical copies of a particular DNA fragment.

+ The utility of cloning is important, it provides the ability to determine the genetic organization of particular regions or whole genome. However, it also facilitates the production of naturally-occurring and artificially-modified biological products by the expression of cloned genes.

+ Insertion of selectable marker genes to pick out recombinant molecules containing foreign inserts

+ Removal or creation of useful sites for cloning

+ Insertion of sequences which not only allow but greatly increase the expression of cloned genes in bacterial, animal and plant cells.

+ The ability to take a gene from one organism (e.g. man or tree), clone E. coli and express it in another (e.g. a yeast) is dependent on the universality of the genetic code, i.e. the triplets of bases which encode amino acids in proteins: