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But
why should we do this manipulation, be it within or across species?
The purposes of doing genetic engineering are many and various.
A range of them are listed below.
These include
:
- repairing
a genetic "defect" (as with the current early trials of gene
therapy in humans),
- enhancing
an effect already natural to that organism (e.g. to increase
its growth rate),
- increasing
resistance to disease or external damage (e.g. crops - blight,
cold or drought),
- enabling
it to do something it would not normally do :
- e.g.
getting a micro-organism to produce human insulin for diabetics,
or a sheep to produce a human blood-clotting protein in
her milk, in both cases a transgenic method,
Cloning Cloning
often gets referred to in the same breath as genetic engineering,
but it is not really the same. In genetic engineering, one or
two genes are typically changed from amongst perhaps 100,000.
Cloning essentially copies the entire genetic complement of a
nucleus or a cell, depending on which method is used.
Rick
Weiss
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