Manipulating genomes Flashcards
Microorganisms
E.coli
Benefits
GM microorganisms can make human insulin to treat all diabetics and human growth hormone to treat children with pituitary dwarfism.
Hazards
Microorganisms could escape into the wild and transfer marker genes for antibiotic resistance to other bacteria. However they have been synthesised to not synthesise an essential nutrient and therefore cannot live outside a lab.
Plants
Bt tabacco and Bt maize
Benefits
tobacco plants modified to produce a toxin that was normally produced by a bacterium which is a pesticide as it is toxic to insects. this eliminiated the need to spray it around plants and possibly contaminating other organisms.
Hazards
Bt toxic to monarch butterflies, but do not take nectar from tobacco or maize.
Soya beans
resistant to a herbicide so weeds competing with the soya plants could be killed with the herbicide.
H
potential gene passed into the weeds producing super weeds.
Golden rice
B
lots of children die in india or go blind through lack of beta carotene. golden rice was genetically modified to contain a gene from daffodils.
company offered free licences to farmers so they can keep and replant rice seeds.
plantains
B
enhanced with more zinc in areas with little meat.
H
fear eating foods with foreign DNA and worry that the inserted genes will somehow be expressed in us. However, all the food we eat contains genes and we digest the DNA and enzymes all the time.
pathogens
viruses genetically modified to have no virulence can be used to make vaccines, as they still have the antigens on the surface. reduces chance of vaccines making people ill.
H
may increase cancer or interfere with gene regulation.
mice
B
millions of GM mice have been developed to therapies for breast and prostate cancer. other mice have had genes knocked out to find out the function of those genes.
H
strict regulations on welfare if animals.
Gm goats
GM goats produce spider silk protein in their milk. silk used in cables, sutures and bullet proof vests.
H
concerned about animals welfare. however, these animals are valuable and likely to be well looked after and not be eaten
Pharming
genetically modified animals to produce pharmaceuticals.
B
genes for human pharmaceutical proteins can be inserted into goats or sheep and the human protein is expressed into the milk they harvest.
H
Concerns for animal welfare. But they are valuable and likely to be well looked after.
synthetic biology
create biological molecules from scratch, so building biological systems from artificially made molecules to see whether they work the way we think they do and redesigning biological systems to work better and making new molecules.
computational biology and bioinformatics
compare organisms is a complicated process made easier by computers, called computational biology and bioinformatics which uses and develops computer data to organise analyse and store biological data.
epidemiological studies
study of health and disease within a population-it considers the distribution of a disease and its cause and effects. (some genes have a greater risk of disease)
