- Nature is an extremely complex inter-related chain consisting of many species linked in the food chain. Some scientists believe that introducing genetically modified genes may have an irreversible effect with consequences yet unknown.
- Genetic engineering borderlines on many moral issues, particularly involving religion, which questions whether man has the right to manipulate the laws and course of nature.
Genetic engineering may be one of the greatest breakthroughs in recent history alongside the discovery of the atom and space flight, however, with the above eventualities and facts above in hand, governments have produced legislation to control what sort of experiments are done involving genetic engineering. In the UK there are strict laws prohibiting any experiments involving the cloning of humans. However, over the years here are some of the experimental 'breakthroughs' made possible by genetic engineering.
- At the Roslin Institute in Scotland, scientists successfully cloned an exact copy of a sheep, named 'Dolly'. This was the first successful cloning of an animal, and most likely the first occurrence of two organisms being genetically identical. Note : Recently the sheep's health has deteriorated detrimentally
- Scientists successfully manipulated the genetic sequence of a rat to grow a human ear on its back. (Unusual, but for the purpose of reproducing human organs for medical purposes)
- Most controversially, and maybe due to more liberal laws, an American scientist is currently conducting tests to clone himself.
We have now come to a time in history when we know the most we have ever been able to dream about knowing and sometime in our life times, we are going to recreate the record books with some of the things we are now capable to do as human beings.
First, I am going to write about our capability and knowledge of botany or plants.
We can use genetic engineering to improve our crops to give better yields, produce less wastage, require less nutrients, keep off insects etc many things as well as improving their nutritional value and quality.
However, we are still unable to make plants synthesize some valuable enzymes, chemicals and biopolymers other than at very high costs.
There are many plants that we have already manipulated for the reasons shown.
Here are some common plants that have been manipulated,
Apple Toxin for insect resistance
Cabbage Herbicide tolerance
Cotton Toxin for insect resistance/Herbicide tolerance
Cucumber Virus resistance
Lettuce Virus resistance
Peanut Herbicide tolerance/virus resistance
but how do we genetically manipulate all of these and many more to have the characteristics that we desire?
Before genes could be genetically modified or GM farmers would still be able to get their desired crop by cross breeding this is where a gene encoding a desirable trait is breed with a related variety that carries the gene.
Farmers would use this process with cows until they got the optimum yield out of them cross breeding them over and over again
Another way to create genetic changes is by using radiation, this is called radiation mutagenesis. In this process, plants or plant cells are bombarded with radiation that damages DNA, causing changes at random, some of which produce useful results. Nevertheless, these results are never certain a scientist could use this technique that is far more expensive to and never reach the perfect result.
Although genetically modified plants are more costly in the short run they are relatively cheap to say the results are near perfect all the time and we never have to worry about being able to do the experiment again because it is recorded and is easily possible to do the exact experiment again.
Genetic engineering is a recent technique for improving crop plants.
It is a process where a single gene is added to a plants complement of genes, together with a gene that provides a marker that allows plants carrying the first gene to be identified.
It does this by hitching a lift with a DNA fragment from a natural engineer, or by bombarding plant tissue with tiny gold particles covered in DNA. Whole plants are then regenerated from the genetically modified plant cells by culturing and applying plant hormones. By using this process, it eradicates the transfer of large numbers of unidentified, possibly undesirable, genes which is inevitable in traditional plant breeding.
Therefore, this is why we are trying our hardest to convince people that Gm foods are not that bad because they are much more precise and predictable than the older conventional techniques. It also allows genes to be introduced into a crop plant from any source.
However, GM foods have a lot of opposition.
Therefore, what really are the benefits of GM foods?
There have been many bold claims about GM foods like that they will:
- Look better
- Require less intensive farming methods
- Need less pesticide use
- Have longer shelf life than conventional crops.
I think that much too little is known to justify commercial use because:
It is irresponsible to use genetic engineering for commercial purposes at this stage of very incomplete knowledge about the effects, especially so as harmful substances may be generated. Also, very little is known what artificially manipulated genes released into nature may do to the environment.
Conclusion
The ways in which Genetic Modification/Engineering has changed the modern world
From this essay it is an undeniable fact that modern science knows much too little about the effects of genetic modification /engineering to be able to predict and master the consequences. Therefore, genetic modification /engineering have to be confined to contained laboratories until science knows what it is doing. By using it for foods at this stage means an inevitable risk for unexpected and potentially harmful effects on the human health as well as for our environment, this is why I think that we should take one-step at a time, as we cannot afford a mistake as our environment could subsequently pay for science’s mistake.
By Vikas Pandya
My references are the following:
From:www.biology-online.org/2/13_genetic_engineering.htm
From: www.icgeb.trieste.it/ (THE INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR GENETIC ENGINEERING AND BIOTECHNOLOGY.
AS BIOLOGY specification A
Advanced Biology principles and application, CJ CLEGG