Let’s Check

ACTIVITY 9: Now, that you know the essential concepts and terms in the study of
applications and effects of biotechnology and biodiversity to the society. Let’s try to
check your understanding on these concepts. Identify what is being asked in the
following questions below:
GENETIC
MODIFICATION 1. When a scientist is identifying a trait from an
organism and used them to develop a specialized
trait of a crop. What is this processed called?

RECOMBINANT DNA
TECHNOLOGY 2. In reference to item number 1, what biological
systems/ technology is used by the scientist to
modify the trait?
CARTAGENA PROTOCOL
ON BIOSAFETY 3. What do you call to the strict compliance to be
implemented prior to the transportation and
distribution of living modified organisms?

GENETIC ENGINEERING 4. It is a process that aims to address issues with

regard to food security, for agriculture, drug
GENETIC production and even for nutrition.
MODIFICATION
5. It is a process done to plants, animals, or to
microorganism whose genetic makeup has been
modified using recombinant DNA methods.

BIOTECHNOLOGY
6. Development of vaccines for medicines, injected
hormonal application to poultry industry, treatment for
water supplies and etc. are examples of ______.
CARTAGENA PROTOCOL
ON BIOSAFETY 7. It has the focus on boosting awareness of
biodiversity’s importance by promoting actions to
foster biodiversity.
RECOMBINANT DNA
TECHNOLOGY 8. An extraction of DNA from a certain organism with a
desired trait has been inserted to unrelated species.
GENETICALLY
MODIFIED ORGANISMS 9. These are also known as transgenic organisms.

CARTAGENA PROTOCOL
ON BIOSAFETY 10. A measure that assures safety and mitigates possible
adverse effect to the environment when not followed.
Let’s Analyze
ACTIVITY 9: Getting acquainted with the concepts in biotechnology and biodiversity,
it matters that you understand their relevance in the society. Thus, you are required
to explain briefly the following questions:

1. What role does the environment play in addressing the needs of a society?
- Our environment addresses the needs of our society through providing us
ecosystem services. Every inch of resources we have today were all
harnessed from the environment, and with its vast benefits, we were able to
thrive for survival and sustain life throughout centuries and eras of our history.
All materials that satisfies our needs and demands all came from the
environment, from the air we breathe, to the potable water we drink, and up to
the technology we have in this contemporary period were made possible
through the resources we get from the relationship we have established with
our environment. Through having an awareness about this role played by our
environment, we must now all be awakened from the reality. When we destroy
our environment, we also destroy our own life. Thus, always bear in mind to
value and protect our environment because it is what sustains life not just for
humanity but also, with the other organisms living with us.

2. How can people maintain the rich biodiversity in nature?

- We are able to bring about changes and maintain the richness of our
biodiversity when we cooperate and participate willfully. Through participating,
we widen our knowledge about the environmental issues, we increase our
awareness about the impacts that biodiversity loss could incur, and we ratify
the support to government policies and actions that conserve our valuable
ecosystems. Through cooperation, we are able to put into actions with our
own efforts the value and sense of stewardship towards our environment and
with those other living things that lurks within it. With this conservation
movement, we would enable biodiversity to thrive and continue to propagate
even up to farthest future we humans could reach.

3. In your own words, how is an organism’s genome manipulated?

- If I were to visualize a representation of genome manipulation, I would
describe it similarly through the process of making a collage project in school.
In making a collage, we would need a paper, scissor, glue, and pieces of
pictures and images to be arrange within the paper. Now, Let’s imagine that
the paper is the organism’s DNA, the scissor and glue would be our tools in
genetic manipulation, and the pictures would be the genetic traits coming from
other species of an organism. The scissor could cut through the paper, it
could enable subtraction of parts and detaching it from its whole portion. With
help of glue, we could attach those cut-out pictures to the paper and changing
its features on the way how we wanted it to look like. That is how scientists
 manipulate genome, they would maneuver the desired traits of organisms and
would propagate it in order to produce more organisms that carries the same
trait or features.

4. What are the pros and cons of genetically modifying crops?

- Genetically modified crops had greatly helped our agriculture and the
cultivation of products we have for industries and economic growth, as well as
the food we have for human end consumption. However, GMOs had become
highly controversial and had become topics for arguments, in fact there were
already claims that they can cause an immense impact to human beings and
most especially to our environment. The advantages of Genetically Modified
Crops were: higher yields, improve quality of horticultural crops, disease
resistance, durability against bruises caused by physical factors, more
nutritious, and have a longer shelf-life. These modifications had profoundly
aided and addressed the challenge of survival and starvation of humanity.
Despite of these benefits, there are still negative impacts that GMOs could
incur to humans such as: can cause rise to allergies, has the possibility of
leading to environmental degradation, can cause genetic defects, has the
chance of reducing nutritional value if not practiced appropriately, can cause
risks to pathogens, could cause pest resistance, and lastly could implicate
human health. In conclusion, everything that we do has positive and negative
effect from it we just have to be responsible and do actions with high caution.
-
5. Will you eat GMOs? Why or why not?
- Yes, technically speaking, most of us have already experienced eating
Genetically Modified Organisms at this present time. Way back before our
time, in history, humans had difficulties and problem with growing their crops
in a shorter period of time thereby, causing them famine and starvation. Now,
in order to survive, I would definitely eat Genetically Modified Products
because that would supply my primary need of sustaining my life. I believe
that Genetically Modified Organisms cannot be overly concluded to be
harmful or hazardous to humans, some might but we cannot avoid the fact
that it had greatly help our agriculture and the food that we serve in front of
our tables. More to that, we have policies and governing bodies that monitors
the production and transportation of GMOs thus, ensuring that the products
that are distributed for human-end consumption would be safe and free from
hazards.