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Biotechnology: Dolly and Surrogate Mom
Biotechnology: Dolly and Surrogate Mom
Biotechnology
Biotechnology, defined broadly, is the engineering of organisms for useful purposes. Often, biotechnology involves the creation of hybrid genes and their introduction into organisms in which some or all of the gene is not normally present.
Fourteen month-old genetically engineered (biotech) salmon (left) and standard salmon (right).
Biotechnology
Well examine:
Animal cloning
DNA fingerprinting
Animal Cloning
As with many important questions, the answer is beyond the scope of science.
Even under the best of circumstances, the current technology of cloning is very inefficient. Cloning provides the most direct demonstration that all cells of an individual share a common genetic blueprint.
Saved by Cloning?
Some are firm believers while many view these approaches to be more of a stunt. Note the use of a closely related species, a domestic goat, as egg donor and surrogate mother.
Significantly, Carbon Copy is not a phenotypic carbon copy of the animal she was cloned from.
Highly unlikely. Attempts at human cloning are viewed very unfavorably in the scientific community.
These are mature and widely utilized biotechnologies. DNA can be cut at specific sequences using restriction enzymes.
Restriction Enzymes are Enzymes That Cut DNA Only at Particular Sequences
Different restriction enzymes have different recognition sequences. This makes it possible to create a wide variety of different gene fragments.
These are recombinant DNAs and they often are made of DNAs from different organisms.
Plasmids are small circles of DNA found in bacteria. Plasmids replicate independently of the bacterial chromosome. Pieces of foreign DNA can be added within a plasmid to create a recombinant plasmid. Replication often produces 50-100 copies of a recombinant plasmid in each cell.
Harnessing the Power of Recombinant DNA Technology Human Insulin Production by Bacteria
Screening bacterial cells to learn which contain the human insulin gene is the hard part.
The single recombinant plasmid replicates within a cell. Then the single cell with many recombinant plasmids produces trillions of like cells with recombinant plasmid and the human insulin gene.
The final steps are to collect the bacteria, break open the cells, and purify the insulin protein expressed from the recombinant human insulin gene.
Cloning animation
Pharming
Pharming is the production of pharmaceuticals in animals engineered to contain a foreign, drug-producing gene.
These goats contain the human gene for a clot-dissolving protein that is produced in their milk.
A stem cell is an undifferentiated, dividing cell that gives rise to a daughter cell like itself and a daughter cell that becomes a specialized cell type.
Stem Cells are Found in the Adult, but the Most Promising Types of Stem Cells for Therapy are Embryonic Stem Cells
The embryo is destroyed by separating it into individual cells for the collection of ICM cells.
Is it ethical to harvest embryonic stem cells from the extra embryos created during in vitro fertilization?
Additional Potential Dilemmas Therapeutic Cloning to Obtain Matched Embryonic Stem Cells
Cells from any source other than you or an identical twin present the problem of rejection. If so, how can matched embryonic stem cells be obtained? A cloned embryo of a person can be made, and embryonic stem cells harvested from these clones.
Therapeutic Cloning
DNA, the Law, and Many Other Applications The Technology of DNA Fingerprinting
A DNA fingerprint used in a murder case. The defendant stated that the blood on his clothing was his. What are we looking at? How was it produced?
Different individuals carry different alleles. Most alleles useful for DNA fingerprinting differ on the basis of the number of repetitive DNA sequences they contain.
A DNA fingerprint is made by analyzing the sizes of DNA fragments produced from a number of different sites in the genome that vary in length.
The more common the length variation at a particular site and the greater the number the sites analyzed, the more informative the fingerprint.
DNA fragments of different size will be produced by a restriction enzyme that cuts at the points shown by the arrows.
The technique is gel electrophoresis. The pattern of DNA bands is compared between each sample loaded on the gel.
Gel electrophoresis animation
In a standard DNA fingerprint, about a dozen sites are analyzed, with each site having many possible alleles.
A DNA Fingerprint
When many genes are analyzed, each with many different alleles, the chance that two patterns match by coincidence is vanishingly small.
SLT 3/8/05
Methods for Plant Genetic Engineering are Well-Developed and Similar to Those for Animals
Worldwide, 7% of children suffer vitamin A deficiency, many of them living in regions in which rice is a staple of the diet.
Standard Cotton
The jurys still out on the magnitude of GM crops ecological impact, but the question is debated seriously.