DNA TECHNOLOGY IS AN EXCITING FIELD THESE DAYS.

THIS
IS THE STUDY AND MANIPULATION OF GENETIC MATERIAL,
AND SCIENTISTS ARE USING DNA TECHNOLOGY FOR A WIDE
VARIETY OF PURPOSES AND PRODUCTS. A MAJOR
COMPONENT OF DNA TECHNOLOGY IS CLONING, WHICH IS
THE PROCESS OF MAKING MULTIPLE, IDENTICAL COPIES OF
A GENE. CLONING MAY BRING TO MIND INTERESTING SCI-FI
MOVIES, BUT CLONING ALSO GIVES US PEST-RESISTANT
PLANTS, VACCINES, HEART ATTACK TREATMENTS AND
EVEN ENTIRELY NEW ORGANISMS

DNA TECHNOLOGY INCLUDING

CLONING, PCR, RECOMBINANT DNA TECHNOLOGY, DNA
FINGERPRINTING, GENE THERAPY, DNA MICROARRAY
TECHNOLOGY, AND DNA PROFILING HAVE ALREADY BEGUN
TO SHAPE MEDICINE, FORENSIC SCIENCES,
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES, AND NATIONAL SECURITY.

 Gene cloning
Plasmid vectors
Lamda phage vectors
Cosmids
Expression vectors
 Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
Denaturation
Primer Annealing
Extension
 Gene libraries
is a large collection of cloned DNA sequences from a single genome. A
genomic library, in theory, would contain at least one copy of every
sequence in an organism's genome. To investigate the structure of a given
chromosome, or to clone specific genes, libraries may be prepared from a
subset of the entire genome (for example, a single chromosome). The first
step is to break up, or 'fractionate', the genome using physical methods or
restriction enzymes. The fragments are then linked to appropriate vectors
and cloned in a suitable host cell population.
 Dolly the GMO salmon
sheep
In 1996, British scientists created the And soon, we could be eating
first cloned sheep, named Dolly, by genetically modified animals. The
transferring the nucleus from an AquAdvantage(R) Salmon, created by
adult cell into an unfertilized a company called AquaBounty
premature egg whose nucleus had Technologies, contains a gene from
been removed, a process called the Chinook salmon that makes it
nuclear transfer. Sadly, Dolly died of grow much faster. The salmon is
a lung disease at the age of six. currently under review by the FDA.

Glow-in-the-dark Super-muscly pigs

mice
And in 2002, scientists at Caltech
created glow-in-the-dark mice by
injecting single-celled mouse
embryos with a virus that contained
a jellyfish gene for green
fluorescence. Researchers have since
created glow-in-the-dark fish, cats,
and other animals.
In the last few years, researchers
have found ways to edit genes much
more easily and accurately. Earlier
this year, South Korean scientists
used a gene editing technology
called a TALEN to tweak the genes in
pigs to make them produce more
muscle, Nature News reported.

Less farty cows Tiny pet 'micropigs'

We might even start to have
Some of these experiments serve a
genetically modified pets. Scientists
noble purpose. Researchers at the
in China used a new genome editing
University of Alberta in Canada
technique called CRISPR/Cas9 to
found the bacterium that produces
modify the genes of Bama pigs to
methane, and in 2009, they created a
create tiny "micropigs" which they
line of cattle that produces 25% less
plan to sell commercially. The feat
of the smelly gas than the average
stirs up a larger debate over how this
cow. This is important because
powerful method should be used.
methane from cows is a major
source of the greenhouse gases
causing global warming. Pig organ
Silk-spinning donors
Gene editing technology could also

goats
In 2012, scientists at the University
revolutionize medicine. Geneticist
George Church of Harvard University
of Wyoming engineered goats to and his colleagues recently modified
produce a protein in spider silk in more than 60 genes in pig embryos,
their milk. Silk is useful for a variety in an effort to make the animals
of applications in materials science suitable donors for human organ
and medicine, and it's hard to get transplants. That's ten times the
spiders to make enough of it. number of genes that scientists have
edited in any other animal, Nature
News reported.
Allergy-free milk GFP bunny
But scientists aren't the only
That same year, AgResearch, a ones doing these experiments.
company owned by the New Zealand In 2000, an artist named
government, engineered a cow to Eduardo Kac created a glow-in-
produce milk without one of the the-dark bunny, known as the
proteins that many people are "GFP bunny," an albino rabbit
allergic too, known as β- that fluoresced under blue light.
lactoglobulin. The milk also
contained more casein, a nutritious
protein found in milk.
JERICHO NOEL E SILVA
10 STS LOUIS AND ZELIE MARTIN

Mutation is a permanent change in the DNAsequence

of a gene. sometimes mutations can be useful but
mostly they are harmful as changes in dna can
change the way a cell behaves. as genes are a set of
hereditary materials that contain instructions
necessary for a cell to work so if some of these
instructions go wrong the cell may not know how to
function.

TYPES OF MUTATIONS:
A substitution is a mutation in which there is an exchange
between two bases (i.e. a change in a single "chemical letter" such
as switching a T to a C). Such a substitution could change a codon
to one that encodes a different amino acid and cause a change in
Substituti the protein produced. Sometimes substitutions may not effects
on the protein structure, such mutations are called silent mutations
and sometimes they may change an amino-acid-coding codon to a
single "stop" codon and cause an incomplete protein. This can
seriously affect the protein structure which may completely
change the organism.

Insertions are mutations in which extra base pairs are

Insertion inserted into a new place in the DNA. The number of base
pairs inserted can range from one to thousands!

Deletions are mutations in which a section of DNA is lost, or

deleted. The number of base pairs deleted can again range from
Deletion one to thousands! Insertions and Deletion mutations are often
s together dubbed as INDELS.

Protein-coding DNA is divided into codons which are three bases

long, insertions and deletions in these codons can completely
change a gene so its message cannot be decoded correctly. Such
Framesh mutations are called frameshift mutations. For example,
consider the sentence, "The cat ate her rat." Each word
ift represents a codon. If we delete the first letter and read the
sentence in the same way, it doesn't make sense. Similarly if the
codons become jumbled up, they would no longer make any
sense, in such frameshifts, a similar error occurs at the DNA
level, where the codons cannot be parsed correctly. This usually
gives rise to truncated proteins that are as useless as "rca tet hce
tee" is uninformative.