Biology in Your World

1. Biology in Your World Section 1.2

2. Solving Real-World Problems Biologists are working to solve problems, such as: • Preserving our environment • Improving the food supply • Understanding the human genome • Fighting disease

3. Preserving our environment • Conservation biologists are exploring ways to achieve a balance between people’s growing need for land and the need to preserve the environment.

4. Improving the food supply • Genetic engineering of crop plants has made some plants resistant to herbicides, or poisonous to insect pests, or more nutritious.

5. Understanding the human genome • A genome is the complete genetic material contained in an individual. • Government-funded and private research teams from several countries completed sequencing of the human genome.

6. Fighting Disease • AIDSis a fatal disease caused by HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), a virus that attacks and destroys the human immune system. • New vaccines are being tested that attack two or more parts of the HIV virus at the same time.

7. Fighting Disease, continued • Canceris a growth defect in cells, a breakdown of the mechanism that controls cell division. • Great progress is being made in curing many cancers. great promise.

8. Fighting Disease, continued Emerging diseases • Biologists are fighting new diseases not known in the past. • Some of these diseases include West Nile virus and mad cow disease.

9. Fighting Disease, continued • Gene Therapyis the replacement of a defective gene with a normal one. • Researchers believe it is possible to use a virus to transfer a normal copy of a gene into a cell.