No More Teary Onion, Thanks to Genetic Engineering

The blog, Rael the Prophet, reports on an article in the UK Telegraph about a research on a genetically engineered tear-free onion being collaboratively conducted by researchers from Japan and the New Zealand Institute for Crop & Food Research. We're all aware how teary an onion can be if mishandled when chopping. To men and women who spend considerable amounts of time cooking, this, definitely is news worth celebrating.

In addition to ridding onion of the gene that causes teary effects on our eyes, these researchers promise that this new variety will be sweeter and healthier.

What an exciting research? Indeed, it has generated quite a buzz. The journal Onion World, in its December edition, has featured this work, which is being piloted by Dr. Colin Eady. The popular environmental blog Environmental Grafita gleefully proclaims, GM onions means no more tears, with sarcasm:

Anti-GMO activists may soon be tearing up after a New Zealand company announced the development of a genetically modified tear free onion.

I can't also wait to see their [anti-biotech activists] reactions. Instead of inserting a foreign gene into the onion, which has been the practice in crop genetic engineering, researchers in this project will be working to suppress the gene that makes onions teary.

The key is not to introduce a foreign gene but to silence one using a phenomenon called RNA interference. By stopping sulphur compounds from being converted to the tearing agent and redirecting them into compounds responsible for flavour and health, the process could even improve the onion.

So, which direction will the debate on safety of this new onion variety take? We're always told there's no guarantee of safety of genes inserted into crops such as corn, cotton, or soya. Will the anti-biotech groups now claim removing a gene from a crop, and onion onion for that matter, will compromise human health and the environment? Let's wait for the debate to start.

James Wachai specializes in agricultural biotechnology communication.

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Genetic Engineering

This subject is immensely intricate but hugely entertaining and stimulating for a human mind. It involves manipulation of material that has such wide diversity, which is yet not fully covered or even understood by the scientists. This article will try to tackle the subject by explaining its meaning and functions.

What does genetic engineering mean? If we break the words down, then we understand that it is engineering of some material that involves genes. Genetic is something involves genes and genes are the coded information contained within a material that is known as DNA. DNA is a chemical molecule, which contains information about the make up of an organism. For example in our DNA, the information will be about our looks, eye colour, hair colour, size of our body parts, our blood group, etc. So if we have a DNA of any organism we can (on paper) reproduce that very organism as we have all the information about it. It's like having a recipe for a dish, which can be used to make that exactly same dish again and again. DNA is just like a recipe for any organism. Going back to cooking analogy, if we use a recipe to cook a dish, when its cooked we don't like the taste because perhaps there was too much of some ingredient So next time when we cook the dish we either omit that ingredients or substitute with another ingredient. This will cause the dish to be different from the original recipe and may be more to your taste. We can say that recipe has been manipulated or engineered to give us the dish with taste that we like. Well Genetic Engineering is when we manipulate the DNA and try to bring about changes in the organism, which would improve the organism or make it do what would be beneficial to us. For example, an organism such as cow that produces milk, if we manipulate with her DNA and make her produce more amount of milk, we have genetically engineered the cow for our benefit.

As genetic is a huge subject, therefore its engineering stems to many varied directions. The basic technique carried many advantages and disadvantages. The advantages allow us to use this technique to treat or cure many diseases. Genetic Engineering is applied to gene therapy where the faulty gene that is causing the diseases is either replaced with a normal gene or omitted in order to cure the disease. An example is Cystic Fibrosis where one of the gene is faulty, that causes build up of thick mucus in a person's breathing system and the person suffers from chest infection and cough for most of their life. In this case, the normal gene (that does not cause the build up of thick mucus) is inserted into the DNA, which then gives instruction and helps to stop the build up of the mucus. Though this is a good technique to help the problem but it is very expensive and the research takes a long time to be able to clone the normal genes.

It is also used to genetically engineered microorganism. For example manipulating bacteria to produces antibiotics, hormones and enzymes. If we think of bacteria as a photocopier we can understand how it is used to make so many beneficial materials. A bacterium tries to survive by multiplying a very high rate. Whatever it ingests it will reproduce and multiply. If we insert the gene of interest (gene to make antibiotic) in bacterium feed, it will ingest and reproduce bacteria with that particular gene. The bacteria have photocopied information that we require in bulk such as antibiotics.

Genetic Engineering is used to improve nature, change animals, change plants, and to find many answers relating to human activities. Where its uses are immensely beneficial, they also give rise to many social ethical and economical issues. For example when it is used to select either sex of an unborn baby, or select features of baby such as eye colour, hair colour or any other in demand feature, giving rise to designer babies. This technique is also used to produce GM food (genetically modified) which also raises many issues such as if the use of GM food produces more illnesses in people and weather its use is should be allowed.

There is much more research needed to be done to advance this technique. Like everything else in life, it has advantages and disadvantages. Its correct use can be very beneficial for humankind and for that reason it should come with some legal limitations.

[http://www.manchesterscience.co.uk]

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Genetic Engineering - The Technology of 21st Century

Genetic engineering today is no longer a new term for the world. Every day in the newspapers, televisions, magazines the new inventions of genetic engineering are noticed. Genetic engineering may be described as the practice that manipulates organism's genes in order to produce a desired outcome. Other techniques that fall under this category are: recombinant DNA technology, genetic modification (GM) and gene splicing.

HISTORY

The roots of genetic engineering are connected to the ancient times. The Bible also throws some light on genetic engineering where selective breeding has been mentioned. Modern genetic engineering began in 1973 when Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen used enzymes to cut a bacteria plasmid and inserted another strand of DNA in the gap created. Both bits of DNA were taken from the same type of bacteria. This step became the milestone in the history of genetic engineering. Recently in 1990, a young child with an extremely poor immune system received genetic therapy in which some of her white blood cells were genetically manipulated and re-introduced into her bloodstream so that her immune system may work properly.

PROMISE

Genetic engineers hope that with enough knowledge and experimentation, it will be possible in the future to create "made-to-order" organisms. This will lead to new innovations, possibly including custom bacteria to clean up chemical spills, or fruit trees that bear different kinds of fruit in different seasons. In this way new type of organisms as well as plants can be developed.

PROCEDURE

Genetic engineering requires three elements: the gene to be transferred, a host cell into which the gene is inserted, and a vector to bring about the transfer. First of all, the necessary genes to be manipulated have to be 'isolated' from the main DNA helix. Then, the genes are 'inserted' into a transfer medium such as the plasmid. Third, the transfer medium (i.e., plasmid) is inserted into the organism intended to be modified. Next step is the element transformation whereby several different methods including DNA guns, bacterial transformation, and viral insertion can be used to apply the transfer medium to the new organism. Finally, a stage of separation occurs, where the genetically modified organism (GMO) is isolated from other organisms which have not been successfully modified.

APPLICATIONS

Genetic engineering has affected every field of life whether it is agriculture, food and processing industry, other commercial industries etc. we will discuss them one by one.

1. Agriculture Applications

With the help of genetic engineering it would be possible to prepare clones of genetically manipulated plants and animals of agricultural importance having desirable characteristics. This would increase the nutritive value of plant and animal food. Genetic engineering could lead to the development of plants that would fix nitrogen directly from the atmosphere, rather than from fertilizers which are expensive. Creation of nitrogen fixing bacteria which can live in the roots of crop plants would make fertilization of fields unnecessary. Production of such self fertilizing food crops could bring about a new green revolution. Genetic engineering could create microorganisms which could be used for biological control of harmful pathogens, insect pests, etc.

2. Environmental Applications

Genetically modified microorganisms could be used for degradation of wastes, in sewage, oil spills, etc. Scientists of the General Electric Laboratories of New York have added plasmids to create strains of Pseudomonas that can break down a variety of hydrocarbons and is now used to clear oil spills. It can degrade 60% of the crude oil, while the four parents from which it was derived break down only a few compounds.

3. Industrial Applications

The industrial applications of recombinant DNA technology include the synthesis of substances of commercial importance in industry and pharmacy, improvement of existing fermentation processes, and the production of proteins from wastes.

4. Medicinal Applications

Among the medical applications of genetic engineering are the production of hormones, vaccines, interferon; enzymes, antibodies, antibiotics and vitamins, and in gene therapy for some hereditary diseases.

Hormones

The hormone insulin is currently produced commercially by extraction from the pancreas of cows and pigs. About 5% of the patients, however, suffer from allergic reactions to animal-produced insulin because of its slight difference in structure from human insulin. Human insulin genes have been implanted in bacteria which, therefore, become capable of synthesizing insulin. Bacterial insulin is identical to human insulin, since it is coded by human genes.

Vaccines

Injecting an animal with an inactivated virus stimulates it into making antibodies against viral proteins. These antibodies protect the animal against infection by the same virus by binding to the virus. Phagocytic cells then remove the virus. Vaccines are manufactured by growing the disease-producing organism in large amounts. This process is often dangerous or impossible. Moreover, there are difficulties in making the vaccine harmless.

Interferon

Interferons are virus induced proteins produced by cells infected with viruses. They appear to be the body's first line of defence against viruses. The interferon response is much quicker than the antibody response. Interferons are anti-viral in action. One type of interferon can act. Against many different viruses, i.e. it is not virus specific. It is, however, species specific. Interferon from one organism does not give protection against viruses to cells of another organism. Interferon provides natural defence against such viral diseases as hepatitis and influenza. It also appears to be effective against certain types of cancer, especially cancer of the breast and lymph nodes. Natural interferon is collected from human blood cells and other tissues. It is produced in very small quantities.

Enzymes

The enzyme urokinase, which is used to dissolve blood clots, has been produced by genetically engineered microorganisms.

Antibodies

One of the aims of genetic engineering is the production of hybridomas. These are long lived cells that can produce antibodies for use against disease.

5. Gene therapy for treating hereditary diseases

The earlier gene transplantation experiments were concerned with trans¬planting genes in vitro into isolated cells or into bacteria. Gene transplantation experiments have now been extended to living animals.

6. In Understanding of Biological Processes

Genetic engineering techniques have been used for acquiring basic knowledge about - biological processes like gene structure and expression, chromosome mapping, cell differentiation and the integration of viral genomes. This could lead to a better under¬standing of the genetics of plants and animals, and ultimately of humans.

7. Human Applications

One of the most exciting potential applications of genetic engineering involves the treatment of genetic disorders. Medical scientists now know of about 3,000 disorders that arise because of errors in an individual's DNA. Conditions such as sickle-cell anemia, Tay-Sachs disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Huntington's chorea, cystic fibrosis, and Lesch-Nyhan syndrome are the result of the loss, mistaken insertion, or change of a single nitrogen base in a DNA molecule. Genetic engineering makes it possible for scientists to provide individuals who lack a certain gene with correct copies of that gene. The proposal for human cloning are still waiting to come on floor. Genetic engineering has benefited the couples who are infertile.

Safe guards of genetic engineering

The general safeguards for recombinant DNA research are outlined below:

1. Genes coding for the synthesis of toxins or antibiotics should not be introduced into bacteria without proper precautions
2. Genes of animals, animal viruses or tumour viruses should also not be introduced into bacteria without proper precautions.

3. Laboratory facilities should be equipped to reduce the' possibility' of escape of pathogenic microorganism by using microbial safety cabinets, hoods, negative pressure laboratories, special traps on drains lines and vacuum lines.
4. Use of microorganisms occupying special ecological niches such as hot springs and salt water should be encourage If such organisms escape they will not be able to survive.
5. Use of non-conjugative plasmids as plasmid cloning vectors is recommended as such plasmids are unable, to, promote their own transfer by conjugation.

Dangers of genetic engineering

Recombinant DNA research involves potential dangers. Genetic engineering could create dangerous new forms of life, either accidentally or deliberately. A host microorganism may acquire harmful characteristics as a result of insertion of foreign genes. If disease-carrying microorganisms formed as a result of genetic manipulation escaped from laboratories, they could cause a variety of diseases. For example, Streptococcus, a bacterium causing rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, strep throat and kidney disease, never acquired penicillin resistance in nature. If a plasmid carrying a gene for penicillin resistance is introduced into Streptococcus it would confer penicillin resistance on the bacterium. Penicillin would now become ineffective against the resistant organism.

Navodita Maurice

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