variation and evolution - gentic engineering

Question 1

what is genetic engineering?

Answer 1

genes from one organism (eg humans) are cut out and transferred to another organism (eg bacteria). in this case, the genome of the bacteria is modified and now includes a human gene eg insulin

Question 2

what is insulin?

Answer 2

a hormone involved in blood glucose regulation in humans

Question 3

what do people with type 1 diabetes suffer with + how do they treat this?

Answer 3

don’t make their own insulin so have to inject themselves regularly. bacteria have been genetically modified to contain the human insulin gene. these bacteria now produce human insulin which can be purged and used for treatment of diabetes

Question 4

what are genetically modified (GM) crops?

Answer 4

where genes have been transferred to plants. GM crops produce a greater yield than normal crops. we can make GM crops resistant to disease or insect attack or produce bigger/better fruits. some GM crops are resistant to herbicides, which means farmers can spray their fields to kill weeds without harming GM crops

Question 5

why are people against GM crops?

Answer 5

• think they can be harmful to insects or wild flowers
• not safe
• do more research in health affects on eating GM crops

Question 6

what is gene therapy?

Answer 6

genetic modification to treat inherited disorders in humans.
long term effects not known. if we modify a gene, don’t know effect on other genes

Question 7

main steps in genetic engineering

Answer 7

1. identify gene that we want to transfer (eg human, animal or plant gene)
2. use enzymes to isolate the gene
3. transfer the gene into a small circle of DNA, called plasmids which originally came from bacteria and useful for transferring DNA from one organism to another
4. instead of plasmid can also use a virus. because plasmid/virus transfers DNA from one organism to another scientists call them vectors
5. desired gene is transferred into the cells of target organism for examples in an animal, plant etc

Question 8

what stage do we always transfer the gene?

Answer 8

an early stage in the organism’s development
eg in a animal, we would do it at the early embryo stage to make sure all cells receive transferred gene so that the organism develops the characteristic that we want