Chapter 13 - Biotechnology
I. What is Biotechnology?
A. Biotechnology - any industrial or commercial use or alteration of organisms, cell, or biological molecules to achieve specific goals
B. Selective Breeding - The breeding of specific parents to choose or magnify traits in the offspring (old-style biotechnology)
C. Genetic Engineering - the modification of genetic material to achieve specific goals
D. Recombinant DNA - DNA that contains genes or parts of genes from different organisms
E. Transgenic, or Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) - Organisms that express DNA that has been modified or derived from a separate organism
II. How does DNA recombination occur in nature?
A. Recombination of genetic material can occur spontaneously in nature
B. Transformation may combine DNA from different bacterial species
1. Transformation - the ability of certain bacteria to acquire DNA from the environment
2. The uptake of DNA could be either a mechanism of adaptation or a survival mechanism to deal with starvation.
C. Viruses may transfer DNA between bacteria and between eukaryotic species
1. Viruses are nonliving genetic constructs that can invade and overtake a host's machinery
2. Viral duplication is very inexact, sometimes packaging pieces of host DNA into viral shells, creating defective virions
3. Defective virions can infect other cells and pass on the included host DNA
III. How is biotechnology used in forensics?
A. The explosion of DNA forensics results from the invention of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) in 1986.
B. The PCR Procedure
C. The construction of the primers in PCR allows for the amplification of very specific sequences
D. Forensics focuses on regions called Short Tandem Repeats (STR), a match of 10 STR regions give a 1:1,000,000,000,000 identification of a suspect
E. Amplified DNA is separated by electrophoresis.
F. The patterns of STR give a suspect's DNA fingerprint
IV. How is biotechnology used in agriculture?
A. Many of our crops are genetically engineered.
B. Engineering
1. The desired gene is cloned
2. Restriction enzymes are used to cut specific nucleotide sequences
3. Cutting two pieces with the same restriction enzyme allows the pieces to be joined together
4. Plasmids are used to shuttle recombinant DNA
V. How is biotechnology used for medical diagnosis and treatment?
A. DNA can be used to diagnose genetic diseases
B. DNA Technology used to treat disease.