Download GMOs & Clones

Can we give an organism a unique
trait like pesticide resistance, have it
make a novel protein like insulin, or
get it do something for us like clean
up radioactive waste.
Genetic Engineering
• Some organism has a good trait.
EX: it glows in the dark.
• You want to make another organism glow in the
dark.
• Take the gene for glowing in the dark out of the
first organism and put it in the other one.
• Now they both glow in the dark.
• How does this work?
Genetic Engineering
• Making insulin.
TTGCT TCTGCTAACATCGATCT TCAGCTAC
AACGA AGACGATTGTAGCTAGA AGTCGATG
Recombinant
DNA
Bacteria
makes
insulin.
Transgenic Organisms
• Genetically modified organisms or
organisms with changed genes, will
produce babies with their new traits.
• They are now transgenic or have genes
from several organisms.
• How can this be helpful to humans?
• Tomatoes and Fish? Golden Rice?
Cloning
• Make an exact copy of an organism.
• Take the nucleus out of a donor egg cell.
• Put the nucleus of the donor cell into an
empty egg.
• Shock it.
• The new fused cell begins dividing.
• Put the new cell into a foster mother.
• The baby is born.
• It is the exact copy of the animal where the
nucleus came from.
Clone this
sheep.
Why not clone tasty beef cattle?
Cloning People
• Would you want a clone of yourself?
• You could harvest its organs for transplant
into yourself.
• You could just clone yourself to harvest
the stem cells of the embryo, then use
them to fix yourself.
Bill Nye GMO Video Quiz
• What two ways do we make new plant
species with different traits? Which
process is faster?
• What are some benefits of Genetically
Modified Organisms?
• What are some fears of Genetically
Modified Organisms?