Tuesday, October 8, 2013

What Genetic Engineering Can Give Humanity

What Genetic Engineering Can Give Humanity

Genetic engineering is an area of biotechnology that involves actions aimed at the rebuilding of genetic types. The genetic engineering of today allows excluding and including separate genes in order to control activities or organisms and transmit genetic instructions from one body to another, regardless of their types. The more geneticists learn about the way genes and proteins work, the more real the possibility of genotype programming seems to be. It offers the idea of achieving all possible results: making the body more durable to radiation, able to live underwater, regenerate injured organs and even to live forever.
How It Works with Genes
If you include new genes into a body, you can give the body new characteristics and abilities it never ever had before. The change in genes is connected to the transformation of DNA, a chemical structure. The transformed DNA makes the body produce new proteins, and it leads to the appearance of new features within the same body. The definition of genetic engineering we have given at the beginning appeared in 1970,an X chromosome with the first experience in this field of study. In 1973, researchers implanted a new gene into an E. coli bacterium. Since 1982, companies located in the USA, Japan, Great Britain and other countries have been producing genetically engineered insulin. Cloned genes of human insulin were implanted into a bacterial cell. The cell started producing the hormone that has never been produced by microbial strains. About 200 new diagnostic means have already been introduced into medical practice, and more than 100 genetically engineered medications are at the stage of clinical testing. They will be able to fight arthritis, cardiovascular diseases, tumors and, probably, even AIDS.
Genetic Engineering for Economics
Genetic engineering used in agriculture has had an incredible breakthrough. There are already cultivated species of tobacco with luminescent leaves, tomatoes that are durable to frost and corn that is not affected by pesticides. There are several main problems genetic engineering needs to solve in agriculture. They involve having plants that are not vulnerable to viruses, plants that can turn pests off due to natural insecticides of a bacterial origin. It allows us to reduce the amount of used pesticides by 40-60%. Some crops ripen slowly due to genetic engineering, and others grow faster. Tomatoes can be gathered as soon as they are red, but they do not become overripe while they are transported. At the same time, it is possible to have more harvests of corn and crops that grow faster and can satisfy the need of feeding the population.

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