Genetic Engineering

Genetic Engineering is the manipulation of microbes, plants and animals to make products that are useful to people. As such, this technology is not new. It began a long time ago. I would say that biotechnology began with agriculture.

What is Genetic Engineering?

Estimates are that agriculture probably began about 10000 years ago, in what is now the region near Iraq. We have evidence that Sumerians living there at the time learned that barley plants growing around their homes made seeds that could be used to make bear and bread. They started growing these seeds near their settlements. They would use some of the seeds to make bear and bread, and then they would grow the rest of the seeds nearby. This was the first biotechnology.

A History of Genetic Engineering

Werner Arber was born in 1929. As a graduate student at the University of Geneva in the 1950’s, he studied with a physics professor who converted from doing pure physics to biophysics. Arber’s PhD thesis was on the phenomenon of bacteriophages restriction. He didn’t even suspect that his research would begin a revolution.

In 1973, scientists had taken two chromosomes, cut them open, put them back together, and showed that they were functional in a cell. They had created genetically functional recombinant DNA. It was a revolutionary discovery.

Review the timeline of genetic engineering.

Benefits of Genetic Engineering

The first major product of biotechnology was human insulin. This type of insulin is now used to treat type 1 diabetics. Another example is the blood-clotting protein that is missing in hemophilia.

There is a protein called Erythropoietin (EPO). EPO is a hormone-like substance made by the kidneys. The gene coding for EPO was isolated, EPO was made by recombinant DNA technology, and this is now widely used for people who are undergoing kidney dialysis and also people who are being treated with cancer chemotherapy.

There are a significant number of humans that lack adequate amounts of growth hormone. These people are very short in stature. The growth hormone is a protein. So, again, we got to get it through recombinant DNA technology.

We can use biotechnology to have a plant make a vaccine. You could become immune to a disease simply by eating a fruit. Pretty nice, eh?

These are just a few benefits of this new technology.

Genetic Engineering in Agriculture

According to UN estimates, human population will level off at about 10 billion people. Can biotechnology help solve this issue? A real problem in agriculture that existed for millennia is that most plants cannot grow in salty soils. Salt-tolerant transgenic plants may make deserts bloom again.

Other applications of biotechnology in agricultura are:

• Plants That Make Their Own Insecticide
  
• Plants Resistant to Herbicides
  
• Nutritionally Rich Crops

Problems with Genetic Engineering

The first supposed problem is that genetic manipulation is an unnatural manipulation of nature. This is what philosophers call the “yuck factor”. According to this argument, eating food from a plant that has genes from bacteria is just “going too far”. There is no real response to this emotional argument.

The second of the supposed problems is that genetically modified foods might be unsafe to eat. It turns out that most genetically modified plants grown today are not altered in the food part of the plant. We’ve got to be careful with allergies, however.

The third of the risks is that genetically modified plants may be dangerous to the environment. This is maybe a real risk, but not a really serious one.

The revolution that this new technology caused is profound.