bio question help plz!! (1 Viewer)

[dressagestar]

hey does anyone know what the key features of genetic engineering are?? as this is a question for my assessment any help would be great thanks
msg asap
kelly

 

[^CoSMic DoRiS^^]

okay well i only have a few notes on this that i can find at the moment, as most of my work is at school in my locker. but from memory: genetic engineering can encompass the manufacture of GMO's (genetically modified organisms) and cloning. Organisms may be gentically modified for a range of reasons including the elimination of a genetically inherited disease (usually done by deleting or deactivating the gene responsible for the disorder), or to "improve" the organism by inserting genes from one organism to another in order to give it qualities that its own genes do not code for. Eg - strawberries in cold areas can be genetically modified by inserting a salmon gene to make them grow larger and faster. Crops can be modified to produce more crops of superior quality. Cows can be modified to produce more milk. An organism which has had its genes altered by the insertion of a foreign gene from another organism is called transgenic (i think?). um what else - oh yeah cloning...well you can clone an animal using wither the nuclear transfer method or embryonic splitting. Dolly the sheep was created by nuclear transfer. Obviously there's a lot of ethical debate about the moral rightness of cloning animals. plants can be easily cloned...i dont remember how, something about grafting a cutting and growing it by itself...back on genetic engineering...um well as we know variation within a species is important. when you genetically modify an organism (lets say tomatoes) at first the variation within the total tomato population would increase. But if the genetically modifies tomatoes are prefferred then eventually non-modified fruits would be phased out in favour of the GMO and so variation would decrease, thus, if a disease was to suddenly hit the tomato population, very few would survive because they would all be the same and therefore behave the same in reaction the the disease.

well i hope that helped and that it wasnt just a load of crap...if i've said anything incorrect please tell me, lol. its been a while since this topic