Bioengineering, or genetic engineering is an altering of genes in a particularspecies for a particular outcome.
It involves taking genes from their normallocation in one organism 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 using 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 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; – purehuman products such as insulin, and human growth hormone in commercialquantities; – existing antibiotics by more economical methods; – new kinds ofantibiotics not otherwise 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 determine 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 foreign inserts -Removal or creation of useful sites for cloning – Insertion of sequences whichnot 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. manor tree), clone E. coli and express it in another (e.
g. a yeast) is dependent onthe universality of the genetic code, i. e. the triplets of bases which encodeamino acids in proteins:Category: Science
