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Genetic Engineering
Genetic Engineering
 This is any way the the genetic material of an organism
is changed in order to have desired traits.
 Geneticists have many techniques to do this.
Selective Breeding
• This is the method of purposely mating different
individuals with each other.
• The goal of this is to have organisms with certain
desired characteristics.
– Ex. Plants that yield more fruit
– Cows that produce more milk
Inbreeding
 This is when two individuals with the same or very
similar sets of alleles are crossed.
 The offspring that are produced have similar traits as their
parents
 Inbreeding can be used to produce pure bred organisms
 Pure bred dogs are a product of inbreeding
 Golden retrievers, German shepherds, etc.
Negatives of Inbreeding
 Produces little variation
 Can lead to the inheritance of genetic disorders
Hybridization
 When breeders cross genetically different individuals
 The hybrid is meant to have the best traits from both of
the parents
 Ex. Corn with a lot of kernels and is resistant to disease.
Cloning
 Cloning is the process in which scientists are able to
produce genetically identical individuals.
 A clone is genetically identical to the organism from
which it was produced from
Cloning Plants
 Plants can be cloned by
taking cuttings
 A cutting can be a leaf or a
stem
 A cutting can grow an
entirely new plant
Cloning Animals
 Much more difficult than cloning a plant
 You cannot use a cutting
 Dolly was a sheep that was cloned
 Scientists took the egg from one sheep, inserted the
nucleus from the body cell of another sheep, and
implanted the embryo into the third sheep.
Human Genome project
 The objective is to sequence
every gene in the human
body.
Mutations
 A mutation is any change in the gene or genome of an
individual
 This change can either be positive or negative.
 Negative- Any thing that reduces an organisms likely
hood of surviving and reproducing.
 Ex. Cancer, a mutation causes cells to divide uncontrollably
and can be life threatening
 Positive- Anything that increases the likelihood of an
organism surviving and reproducing
Mutations
 Point Mutation- The changing of a single DNA base
 Insertion- The addition of one base to a DNA sequence
 Deletion- One nitrogenous base is removed from a
sequence
Genetic Engineering in
Bacteria
 Scientists insert segments of human DNA into bacteria
DNA
 This causes the bacteria to produce things humans
need
 Insulin
Gene Therapy
 This is when scientist insert working copies of genes
into the cells of a person in order to correct a genetic
disorder.
 Hemophilia- Treated by injecting viruses with a specific
genetic code. This genetic code becomes part of the
host DNA to produce the necessary proteins and
enzymes.