Applications of Genetic

Engineering
Transgenic Organisms
 We have mentioned previously that it is
possible to insert DNA from one organism to
another
◦ These are known as transgenic organisms
 These have many uses
◦ Production of human proteins (such as insulin) in
bacteria
◦ Modified crops to increase yield
 But the more notable, and controversial,
transgenic organisms would be clones
Cloning
 Scientists have developed methods to make
genetic copies (clones) of entire organisms
 The problem came from the fact that cells will

differentiate during the embryonic stage, and

could not revert back
 The answer came when it was discovered that

cells in G0 could be forced into a totipotent

stage
 This was first successfully performed in 1996

with the creation of Dolly

Dolly
 Dolly was created by removing a mammary
cell from an adult sheep
 The cell was forced into G , and its nucleus
0
removed
 An egg cell from another sheep was removed,

and its nucleus was removed

 The nucleus from Dolly’s donor was inserted,

and the egg was implanted into a womb

 The lamb that was born (Dolly) was the

genetic copy of the donor

Problems
 Dolly was euthanized when she was 6
◦ Most sheep live 10-12 years
 It was speculated that her genetic age was
older than her birth age
 Her telomeres were artificially short, since

she was cloned from an older sheep

 This raised questions about the viability of

cloned organisms
DNA Fingerprinting
 Blood and tissue samples are often left at
particularly violent crime scenes
 Scientists used to use blood type as a method

of indentifying a defendant
◦ However, this only proves if a person is innocent
 DNA fingerprinting (now called profiling) can
indentify the guilty individual with a much
higher certainty
 A few different methods have been used
Human Applications
 Many of the technologies we have discussed
are used to directly assist humans
 In particular, DNA fingerprinting has become

quite useful
RFLP
 Restriction fragment length polymorphism
 Restriction enzymes are added to suspect’s

DNA, and samples of DNA at crime scene

 The length of introns is variable in a

population
 When a gel is ran, the two samples are

compared
 More recently, variation in the lengths of
satellite DNA have been used
 These are repeats of the same 1-10

nucleotides, and are highly variable in

humans
 Restriction enzymes are still used
Human Genome Project
 Started in 1990, projected completion by
2005
 Essentially completed in 2000, officially

announced in 2003
 First found sequence of small sequences far

apart
◦ Used these as makers
 Cut the genome up into many smaller
segments, and sequenced these separately
 Computer analyzed to find areas of overlap
 Aligned these, with markers, to get complete
version
 Called this shotgun sequencing
 Next up was to look for genes
 Scan for promoting regions
 Then, have to differentiate between intron

regions and exon regions

 Indentifying the genes is the first step in gene

therapy
 Is the proper sequence is known, a strand can

be engineered into a virus, and inserted into

a patient