Discussions

1.

Since the 1950’s, Genetic Engineering has produced many favorable situations while having some not so favorable situations pop up during trial and error. Genetic Engineering is basically manipulation of a plant or animals’ genes in their DNA (“Pros and Cons of Genetic Engineering”, 2014) for a general purpose.

I do believe the label of “a second Industrial Revolution” is appropriate due to the fact that Genetic Engineering has helped in a number of ways from medical treatments to fresher, healthier produce as well as longer lasting processed foods.

Medical treatments using Genetic Engineering are not yet known to full capacity (“Pros and Cons of Genetic Engineering”, 2014) but the sustained health and freshness of crops and processed foods are. Genetic Engineering has allowed farmers to further protect their crops by being resistant to pests and herbicides (“Pros and Cons of Genetic Engineering”, 2014) which allows for healthier crops.

Nearly everything we eat these days has had some sort of Genetic Engineering done to it. While the “organic” steers away from Genetic Engineering almost everything else has been manipulated to benefit us as humans. Sure there are some drawbacks to Genetic Engineering but there’s drawbacks to most things in life!

Pros and Cons of Genetic Engineering. (2014) Retrieved August 31, 2015, from http://healthresearchfunding.org/pros-cons-genetic-engineering/

2.

During transduction, DNA from bacterium can be transferred from one to another by means of a virus. When the virus infects a cell, it uses the cells replicational, transcriptional, and translation machinery to make numerous virions, or complete viral particles (Boundless, n.d.). Once a variation that is resistant to antibiotic has been replicated, its DNA can be continuously reproduced and shared amongst all of the host cells. Sometimes the viral genome results in spare capacity this may cause bacterial genetic material in the new virion. Now loaded with part bacterial DNA, it will continue to infect bacterial cells. This bacterial material may become recombined into another bacterium upon infection (Boundless, n.d.). Thus the cycle continues. New variations are formed and spread and the strongest most resistant will continue to spread.

Boundless. Microbiology. (n.d). Retrieved 03 Sep. 2015 from https://www.boundless.com/microbiology/textbooks/boundless-microbiology-textbook/microbial-genetics-7/genetic-transfer-in-prokaryotes-81/bacterial-transduction-443-6859/