GENETIC ENGINEERING

Opinion on Genetic Engineering

Opinion on Genetic Engineering

Introduction

Genetic Engineering is a set of techniques, methods and technologies to produce recombinant RNA and DNA, isolation of genes of an organism (cells) of manipulating genes and introducing them into other organisms.

DNA stores the information required to make any organism. It is a combination of four nucleic acids i.e. 'Adenine', 'Thymine', 'Guanine' and 'Cytosine'. When the two strands of DNA combine, Adenine binds with Thymine and Guanine binds with Cytosine, called base pairs. Around 3 billion base pairs exist in the human DNA. There are coding regions of DNA that carry the specific information about the structure of cell, called Genes. Genes function differently in different species, making each specie or organism unique.

With the developments in scientific knowledge and technologies, scientists are now able to alter the genetic constitution of any organism though genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is a term that covers those scientific and industrial techniques to modify the constitution of genes by mixing DNA of different species and genes together.

Genetic engineering is not science in the broadest sense, but is a tool of biotechnology, using the methods of biological sciences, such as molecular and cell biology, cell biology, genetics, microbiology, virology. Over the past few decades, scientists have created a method by which individual cells of tissues of a plant or animal can be made to grow and multiply separated from the body, like bacteria cells. This was a significant achievement - derived cell cultures used for experimentation and for commercial production of certain substances that are using the bacterial cultures could not be obtained (Suter, 2006).

It is a highly sophisticated technique of removing, modifying, or supplementing genes to a DNA molecule in alignment to change the data it contains. By changing this information, genetic technology alterations the type or allowance of proteins an organism is adept of making, thus endowing it to make new compounds or present new functions." Therefore, making a grower or a manufacturer of genetically modified organisms able to "produce attractive characteristics" for each organism.

Babies Genetic Engineering and its pitfalls

Genetic engineering may have some beneficial effects in society today such as finding new cures for diseases and such, but genetic engineering also has a bad side to it. Firstly, with the power of genetic engineering in the hands of a parent, they will be able to decide on whether they would prefer the child to be a male or a female (Flannery, 2008). This might sound good to most parents, but it is dangerous to take more and more control of our lives and leave natural births behind Scientist argue the right of having germ line engineering (genetically engineering the genes in eggs, sperms or embryo's) used in society (Flannery,2008). They argue that it will be able to be used so parents will be able to avoid passing on genetic diseases on to their child. Though this may be true, it is also untrue. The only valid thing about genetic engineering is that is having the ...