What is Biotechnology ?

1. What is Biotechnology ? • Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living things in engineering, technology, medicine, and other useful applications. • This term includes genetic engineering as well as cell and tissue culture technologies. • The concept includes a wide range of procedures for modifying living organisms according to human purposes - going back to domestication of animals, cultivation of plants, and "improvements" to these through breeding programs that employ artificial selection and hybridization.

2. What is Biotechnological Engineering ? • Biotechnological engineering or biological engineering is a branch of engineering that focuses on biotechnologies and biological science.

3. What is Genetic Engineering ? • Biologists can cut, seperate, and splice together DNA sequences in any order. This process allows biologist to engineer a set of genetic changes directly into an organism’s DNA. This form of DNA manipulation is called genetic engineering.

4. Breeding Methods • People have always tried to improve their crops and domestic animals. Today, a knowledge of genetics is used to produce organisms with desirable traits. • A breeder can choose from several methods such as; Selection Inbreeding Hybridization Mutations

5. Breeding Methods Selection: The process of choosing organisms with the most desirable traits for mating is called selection. Ex: A dairy farmer might select and mate only the cows that give the most milk. After mating occurs, the breeder only the offspring with the desired characteristics. They are called Belgian Blues and are the product of selective breeding. Farmers choose only the bulls and cows with the biggest muscle mass to mate.

6. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, Brussels sprouts and kale are all varieties of a single species of wild mustard established by selective breeding.

7. Domestic dogs were selectively bred from wolves, most likely to be a warning system to danger, to help protect their food stocks, and other purposes. When dog breeds are created that have a combination of preferable traits, breeders want to will pure breed the pet for these traits.

8. Breeding Methods Interbreeding: The mating of closely related individuals (such as mother to son, father to daughter, brother to sister) to obtain desired characteristics is called interbreeding. • The closest possible hereditary relationship is self-pollination by plants. • Interbreeding is used to produce domestic animal, such as fowl, sheep, cattle, swine and pets. • However, interbreeding can decrease variation in a population and cause unwanted effects.

9. Breeding Methods Hybridization: When individuals who are not closely related are mated to introduce new, beneficial traits into the population, it is called hybridization. By crossing zebras with horses it makes for a healthier hybrid. Such hybrids are commonly called zorse. Mules are produced by mating of horse and donkey.

10. The liger is a hybrid cross between a male lion and a tigress. A tiglon or tigon is a hybrid cross between a male tiger and a lioness.

12. Breeding Methods Mutations: Naturally occuring mutations are used by plant breeders to improve their stock. Many fruits, such as navel orange and seedless grape, originated as natural mutations. Once discovered, a plant mutation may be reproduced by vegetative propagation.

13. Breeding Methods Mutations: Sometimes, mutations take place during meiosis. When a whole set of chromosomes fails to separate during meiosis, gametes with extra sets of chromosomes are produced. Organisms with three or more sets of chromosomes are called polyploids.

14. Methods of Genetic Engineering • Genetic engineering is a multi step process; • DNA containing the desired gene is cut away from the genes surrounding it. • A piece of DNA of the recipient organism, that is the organism that will recieve the DNA, is combined with these genes. • Combined DNA is inserted to new organism. • Finally, sequences of nucleotide bases in the gene are analyzed to manipulate the gene.

15. Methods of Genetic Engineering 1. Isolating a Gene: Genes can be cut at specific DNA sequences by proteins known as restriction enzymes. Restriction enzymes make it possible to cut DNA into fragments that can be isolated, separated and analyzed. @

17. Methods of Genetic Engineering 2. Making Recombinant DNA: DNA fragments can be combined with bacterial DNA so that they can later be inserted into a bacterial cell. Bacteria often contain small ring- shaped segments of DNA known as plasmid.

18. The new plasmid that contains a piece of foreign DNA is called recombinant DNA.

19. Methods of Genetic Engineering 3. DNA Insertion: Recombinant DNA (plasmid with foreign DNA) is picked up by bacterial cell and these bacteria are isolated and grown into large colonies. This technique is called cloning.

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22. Methods of Genetic Engineering 4. DNA Sequencing: The final step in genetic engineering is to sequence a piece of DNA, or to read the sequence of bases. Only one strand of DNA double helix is used in this process. However, many copies of this strand is needed. Multiple copies of DNA strands can be produced by the process of DNA cloning.

23. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) enables researchers to produce millions of copies of a specific DNA sequence in approximately two hours. This automated process bypasses the need to use bacteria for amplifying DNA. @

24. Applying Genetic Engineering • Genetic engineering provides a way of producing large amounts of rare substances like interferon, hormones like growth hormone and insulin and clotting factors. • Scientists insert the human genes for interferon into bacteria. When these bacteria are cloned, large amounts of interferon can be produced. This technique is used for production of several other rare substances.

26. Applying Genetic Engineering By genetic engineering genetic defects are corrected. The replacement of defective gene is called gene therapy. Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) a genetic disorder in which the immune system fails to develop can be treated with gene therapy. @

27. Applying Genetic Engineering Genetic engineers have inserted genes into plants to make the plants resistant to disease, insects, weed-killing substances. @

28. Applying Genetic Engineering Growth promoting hormones, produced by genetic engineering are used to increase the amount of milk produced by cows and to fatten farm animals. The modified cows produce 13% more protein in their milk than normal cows

29. **In 1997, a Scottish scientist called Dr. Wilmut has cloned a sheep. In his technique, the nucleus of an egg cell is removed. The cell is fused with a donor cell taken from an adult sheep. The fused cell begins to divide and the embryo is then placed into a foster mother sheep, where it develops normally. The offspring of this sheep is a complete copy of the first sheep from which the donor cell is taken. Cloning will enable scientists to save endangered species and produce organs of human body for transplantation.

30. Dolly the clone (and little Polly the clone, too)

31. Horticulturists use cloning to grow plants with specific qualities, like height, flower colour and quality. They use a more complex method than vegetative propagation called tissue culture. All the plants produced in this way are genetically identical

32. WHEN CLONING GOES BAD!!!!!

33. **GE (genetically engineered) organisms (mostly plants) - called transgenic organisms are made by taking genes from some other organism like bacteria, viruses, other plants or even animals and transferring these genes to the organism. In that way, scientists can get the plant to grow bigger or faster or produce more crop for people to eat. Some plants could be made to grow in salty water or very little water, which is good for very dry countries. Others could be programmed to resist disease. Therefore starvation would be prevented.

34. Glofish are produced by infusing fluorescent proteins from different species like jellyfish and corals to zebrafish embryo and allowed to incorporate into the zebrafish’s genome. The luciferase gene, which causes the transgenic organism expressing it to bioluminesce.

35. Therapeutic cloning produces stem cells which can develop into different types of body cell, making them ideal for research into treatment of disease. But, the stem cells created also run the risk of being rejected by the body. The new technology, nuclear reprogramming, creates stem-like cells from the patient's own cells, avoiding this problem.

37. Human Genome Project In order to prevent genetic disorders we need to know whole of the human genome. The “Human Genome Project” started in 1990 with the contribution of many countries and today scientists discovered the whole map of the human genome. Therefore they would be able to find out the genes responsible for genetic disorders or they would be able to control the cell activities. @

38. Ethics and Human Genetics • Should researchers carry out experiments that permanently change human DNA? • Should genetic engineering only be used to cure certain disorders or should it used to make people taller, stronger or more disease resistant? • How should we decide which genes should be transplanted, altered or redesigned? • Who should determine whether experiments with genetic engineering should be done? • What is the proper way to use genetic information? • Does anyone own genetic information? • Do individuals have the right to keep genetic information to themselves?