Genetic Engineering
Applied Science: BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma, topic 5.1.2
Genetic Engineering
Genetic engineering involves modifying (changing) an organism’s genome by introducing a gene from another organism to produce a desired characteristic. Examples of this are:
Insulin-producing gene
- The gene that produces insulin can be inserted into bacteria. Those bacteria can then mass-produce insulin to treat people with diabetes.
Vitamin A rice
- A lack of vitamin A can lead to blindness.
- A lot of communities that were lacking in vitamin A were found to use rice as the core of their diet.
- Therefore, a gene that produced vitamin A was taken from bacteria and added to rice, producing rice (golden rice) that was rich in Vitamin A.
Genetic Engineering
Genetic engineering happens like this:
Cut the gene out
- Enzymes are used to “cut” a desired gene out of a chromosome.
Cut a vector
- The same enzyme is used to “cut” a vector. The Vector is usually a bacterial plasmid (loop of DNA) or virus.
Gene inserted
- The vector is used to insert the gene into the required cells.
Delivering gene
- If the gene is delivered into cells before they have differentiated (at the egg or embryo stage), all cells in the developed organism will have the gene and show the characteristic.
Test yourself on Genetic Engineering
What organism is used to produce human insulin via genetic engineering?
What is NOT "cut" by the enzyme used in genetic engineering?
Genetic Engineering