Genetic Engineering: Achievements and Applications

Achievements of Genetic Engineering

• Genetic engineering is mainly related to the industrial-level production of vital biological substances using genetically modified microorganisms, fungi, plants, and animals.
• It significantly contributes to agriculture, health, medicine, modified crops, processed foods, and improving breeds of crops and animals.
• It plays a role in waste management and energy production.
• This technology can improve breeds of animals and plants and make them more helpful to humans by creating medicines and vaccines for disease treatment.

Applications of Genetic Engineering

• Use in agriculture to produce superior-quality food for the growing human population.
• Genetic engineering or recombinant DNA is used to modify crop plants genetically to reduce the use of fertilizers and chemicals to minimize negative environmental effects.
• It increases yield.

Transgenic Plants

• Transgenic plants are plants with foreign genes.
• Agrobacterium tumefaciens' Ti plasmid and A. rhizogenes's Ri plasmid are used to transfer genes into plant cells.

Objectives for Developing Transgenic Plants

• To develop resistant varieties, with resistance to disease-causing viruses and fungi, soil salinity, drought, or fog tolerance.
• Virus-resistant varieties of tobacco, rice, potatoes, tomatoes, and papayas have been created.
• Fungi-resistant plants possess the chitinase enzyme gene that destroys fungal cell walls.
• To develop pesticide-resistant crops, which eliminates pesticides, protecting humans from the harmful effects of chemical pesticides.
• Inserting the Bt gene can produce a toxic protein, creating pest-resistant varieties of Bt cotton, maize, rice, tomatoes, potatoes, and soybeans.
• To enhance plant species' production capacity by increasing growth hormones like auxins and cytokinins, increasing crop yields, sizes, and amounts of fruits and seeds of tomatoes, onions, peas, wheat, rice, and maize.
• Genetic engineering can introduce nitrogen fixation genes from Rhizobium into non-leguminous grain crops.
• Development of herbicide-resistant varieties to remove weeds, preventing damage to plants and contamination of the environment.
• Genetic engineering is used on cotton, maize, tobacco, and soybean plants to allow them to destroy herbicide chemicals.
• To enhance the nutritional level of plants to provide nutritious food for the poor, like Golden Rice, is rich in Vitamin A.

Transgenic Plant List

• Bt cotton (Bollguard Cotton): Resistant to bollworm and insect larvae, has Bt₂ toxin gene cryllAb Bt CryIA(c) from Bacillus thuringiensis and Weed control gene (Acetoacetate synthetase)
• Golden Rice: Rice grains are golden yellow in colour and rich in vitamin A (β-carotene) has Gene for phytoene synthetase.
• Flavr Savr Tomato: Delayed ripening, improved flavour and insect-resistant, has ACC deaminase gene Antisense gene' PG
• Newleaf Potato: Insect and virus-resistant. Starch content increased by 20-40%, has Bacillus thuringiensis toxin gene (Bt CrylllA)
• Basta Wheat: Bacterial ADP glucose pyrophosphorylase gene, provides Resistance against herbicide PPT
• Yield guard Bt CryIA(c) gene Maize or Corn: Toxin gene from Bacillus thuringiensis, provides Pest and insect resistance.
• Tobacco: Has CPTI (Cowpea trypsin inhibitor) gene, provides Resistance against pests.

Golden Rice

• Golden rice, or Oryza sativa, is a transgenic variety.
• It contains beta-carotene (provitamin A), a precursor of vitamin A, and it was developed by introducing two genes into ordinary rice plants.
• The first gene, Psy (phytoene synthase), was taken from daffodils, and the second gene, Crtl (carotene desaturase), was taken from the soil bacterium Erwinia uredovora.

Bt Crops

• The Bt protein gene is isolated from bacteria to create transgenic plants that resist insect pests, like Bt cotton, maize, rice, tomatoes, potatoes, and soybeans.
• The Bt protein, or crystalline protein, is found in some strains of the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis.
• It has a specific gene cluster on the plasmid, where an endotoxin protein is produced. Crystal proteins, or cry proteins are toxic.

Flavr Savr Tomato

• The Flavr Savr tomato is a genetically engineered fruit where the fruits do not become soft as they ripen.
• It allows them to be fully matured on the plant and stored longer due to the absence of the polygalacturonase (PG) protein or enzyme because scientists have introduced a gene into the tomato plant that prevents the synthesis of the above enzyme.

Methods of Developing Transgenic Plants

• Isolate, identify, synthesize or separate the gene of a specific trait.
• Insert it into a carrier and connect to the carrier's DNA.
• Add the promoter sequence to the gene.
• Introduce a selectable marker gene into the carrier.
• Introduce the carrier into the host plant's cells.
• Plant cell invasion can be done through Agrobacterium, viral genome, microinjection, particle gun, or vector DNA invasion.

Reasons Against Using GM Foods

• Transgenes from GM plants can enter weeds or wild plants, turning them into superweeds.
• Proteins made by transgenes may be toxic or cause allergies and create resistance in insects to these transgenic crops.
• Harmful effects on human health, and impact pollination.

Transgenic Animals

• Transgenic animals are developed through genetic engineering and have foreign genes or gene segments from another animal or plant cell inserted into their genome.
• Gene transfer is called molecular farming.

Objectives when Developing Transgenic Animals

• Increase milk production, improve quality and quantity of meat, obtain quality protein foods, increase egg-laying ability, develop animals that lay eggs throughout the year, develop animals with short reproduction cycles to produce chicks, and use for gene therapy.

Transgenic Animals Preparation Method

• Transfection is used to transfer the desired gene into an animal or embryo cell nucleus.
• Transfection refers to establishing foreign DNA in cultured eukaryotic cells.

Electroporation to Establish Foreign DNA

• Electroporation involves incubating DNA in special vials, applying a brief electrical shock so the plasma membrane becomes permeable, and causing some DNA molecules to enter the nucleus and chromosomes.
• The DNA is directly microinjected into the ovum nucleus, carried out in Xenopus, and with the help of retroviruses or vector DNA.

Transgenic Animals Examples

• Many transgenic animals have been developed, including mice, rabbits, dogs, cats, mules, pigs, sheep, goats, cows, buffalo, chickens, fish, frogs, and insects.
• Transgenic mice with cancer genes are created to study the effects and treatments of cancer genes.

Transgenic Sheep

• Female sheep produces human anti-hemophilia factor
• This can be attained through placing clotting factor ix genes into them to obtain human clotting factor ix.
• Sheep synthesize enzymes needed for the metabolism of the amino acid cystine, and human growth hormone.

Transgenic Goats

• They produce tissue plasminogen activator-TPA, which is a protein that dissolves blood clots, is coded.
• This is used to treat coronary thrombosis, and found in goats' milk.

Transgenic Cows

• They have anti-bacterial human iron-binding protein, and lactoferrin.
• Bovine somatotropin is separated and injected into the cow to increase milk production after bovine somatotropin is introduced into bacteria.

Transgenic Microorganisms

• Transgenic microorganisms or genetically modified microorganisms have their genetic material changed.
• A few foreign genes are inserted into their genome.
• These microorganisms act as miniature factories for bacterial protein, enzymes, hormones, antibodies, interferons, or medications.
• E. coli bacteria is used to synthesize human insulin.

Gene Therapy in Health

• Biotechnology significantly contributes to health care for disease prevention, diagnosis, disease control, therapeutic agents, genetic disorders, and reproduction control.

Recombinant Vaccine Synthesis

• Vaccines stimulate the immune system.
• Genes are integrated encoding proteins that make up the hepatitis or herpes simplex virus coat or coating into the vaccinia virus genome.

Recombinant Vaccines Names

• Anti-hepatitis vaccine: the hepatitis B virus antigen production in bacteria and mouse cells
• Anti-rabies vaccines: prepares a vaccine for rabies virus from E.coli cells.

Interferons Synthesis

• Interferons are proteins released in response to infections by viruses or pathogens.
• Interferons are antiviral and anticancer, Y-interferon.

Creating Rare Medications

• Human genes are cloned into bacteria to purify chemicals or hormones.
• These include insulin, somatostatin, thymosin, growth hormones, and blood clotting factor viii.

Insulin

• Insulin is a vital diagnostic hormone for individuals with diabetes, which is secreted by beta cells of the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas, regulates levels of glucose in the blood.
• Insulin produced is used to treat diabetes mellitus.

Insulin Structure

• Dr. Frederick Sanger found out about the amino acid sequence in 1954, which determined its primary sequence.
• Each protein contains two polypeptide chains - A chain and B chain, which attach to one another by disulfide bridges.
• Chain A has 21 amino acid residues, and B chain contains 30 residues, with a disulfide bond at A's 7th and 20th positions and the sulfide bond at B's 7th and 19th positions.

Genetically Engineered Insulin

• Genetically engineered is made possible by using recombinant DNA technologies isolate and prepare insulin.
• In 1983, Eli Lilly prepared two DNA sequences that mimicked the A and B chains of human insulin and introduced them into E. coli.
• The Humulin is not allergic.

Gene Therapy in Medicine

• Genetic diseases occur when a mutant makes defective proteins or enzymes.
• Gene therapy replaces mutant genes with normal genes.
• Gene surgery introduces the disease-specific functioning gene into a patient's cells so it can function normally thus allowing repair in the defective gene.
• Genetic surgery inserts the disease-specific functioning gene into a patient's cells so it can function normally or amend the defective gene.
• The first successful gene therapy attempt in 1900 was on a four-year-old girl.
• She had severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) because she lacked the enzyme adenosine deaminase (ADA) as scientists added the ADA gene to her bone marrow, allowing her to synthesize the enzyme.

Biopiracy

• Big multinational corporations utilize species of a nation, found vegetation or animals, changed genomes without approval and benefit from poor and underdeveloped countries genetic.
• The government has formed organization which consists of GEAC genetic evaluation.
• Genetic organization decides on the research work genetic and safety of public GM living beings.

Biopatent

• Under the bio patent, the government gives protection to person searching.

Basmati and Biopiracy Relation

• Rice is grown from 1000 years from Asia only country, and 27 variants are found here.
• Ricetec, an american company sold basmati from america and is now the only controller.