Genetic Engineering :: Bioengineering Essays

Bioengineering, or genetic engineering is an altering of genes in a incidentspecies for a particular outcome. It involves taking genes from their normallocation in one existence and either transferring them elsewhere or putting themback into the original organism in different combinations. Most biomoleculesexist in low concentrations and as complex, mixed populations which it is notpossible to work efficiently. This problem was solved in 1970 use a bug,Escherichia coli, a normally innocuous commensal occupant of the human gut. Byinserting a piece of DNA of interest into a vector molecule, a molecule with abacterial origin of replication, when the whole recombinant construction isintroduced into a bacterial colonies all derived from a single original cellbearing the recombinant vector, in a short time a large amount of DNA ofinterest is produced. This can be purified from contaminating bacterial DNAeasily and the resulting output is said to have been "cloned".So far, scien tists have used genetic engineering to produce, for example -improve vaccines against animal diseases such as footrot and pig scours - refinedhuman products such as insulin, and human growth hormone in commercialquantities - existing antibiotics by more economical methods - new kinds ofantibiotics not other available - plants with resistance to some pesticides,insects and diseases - plants with improved nutritional qualities to enhancelivestock productivity.Methods- Manipulation of the Gene pool, which is related to Hybridization which is thebreeding 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 DNAfragment.- The utility of cloning is important, it provides the ability to hold back thegenetic organization of particular regions or whole genome. However, it alsofacilitates the production of naturally-occurring and artificially-modifiedbiological products by the expression of cloned genes. - Insertion of selectablemarker genes to pick out recombinant molecules containing impertinent inserts -