Genetic Engineering Basics
Genetic engineering can be defined as the technique used for modification of genetic makeup in an organism. Changes and modifications can be produced by various methods like gene targeting, artificially fusing synthetic chromosomes, nuclear transplantation etc which result in creation of new DNA. But selective breeding do not comes under any forms of genetic engineering.
Mutation of genes and altering of genetic codes are one of the specialized parts of genetic engineering. The newly developed DNA can be put in arbitrarily, or targeted to a definite fraction of the genome. Other synonyms used for this term “Genetic Engineering” are genetic manipulation or genetic modification.
When any organism gets generated by means of genetic engineering, then they are in generic term called as genetically modified (abbreviated as GM) species & the resultant individual is termed as Genetically Modified Organism (abbreviated as GMO). World’s 1st genetically modified organism was a bacterium breed by Dr. Herbert Boyer and Dr. Stanley Cohen in the year 1973.
There are different procedures for development of such genetic changed organism is a resulting recombinant DNA which involves basic four steps. Genetic science and genetic engineering is highly linked with technology and needs enormous technological support in order to sustain in the market. Bioinformatics problems are big data problems. Genomics, Proteomics, Metagenomics and Mutated Genetic Editing are just a matter of understanding change in states in organisms with context of a lot of features. Many of them can be sorted using machine learning which is really excellent in identifying different patterns in noisy data sets or from huge piles of data; keeping in mind that there should be enough data to make algorithms understand the genetic patterns.
Another important application of machine learning is in finding composite models and confirms and nullifies them rapidly in a fast process, but this time you need a variation of data to compare and make decisions. Hence, technological blend can greatly impact genetic engineering to accelerate the research & development.
Some of the trending applications and applied fields of Genetic engineering: -
Genetically engineered plants bearing fruits and vegetables are bred in such as way that they bring more taste and proper color and nutrition to humans.
Another genetic engineering study findings show possibility of reversing symptoms of autism in the human brain.
With the help of genetic engineering, genetically modified mice were given capabilities to boost fighting capabilities with strong effecting diseases like hepatitis.
Genetic engineering opens limitless possibilities. A very powerful tool developed and evolved early this year – the CRISPR-Cas9. It is a genome (gene modifying) editing tool which is creating massive shake in the science world. It consists of two particular molecules that help in changing and mutating DNAs. The enzyme it uses is named as Cas9 that acts as scissor more precisely ‘molecular scissors’ which cut 2 threads/strands of DNA at a precise location.
More basics abouts this in the upcoming article...
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