Genetically Modified Organisms: The Facts

Introduction

Any organism which has its genetic sequence altered by insertion of a piece of foreign genetic material is considered to be a genetically modified organism, or simply, GMO. The recombinant DNA technology (or gene cloning) allows such modification by using enzymes that are naturally found in almost all organisms. A restriction enzyme is used to cut a specific DNA segment of a ‘donor’ genome and to generate sticky ends in the ‘host’ genome. The cut-up portion is then joined between the sticky sites by the help of a DNA ligase enzyme which stitches them together. Since its introduction in the field of biomedical sciences, the technique has been used for various purposes, which include but is not restricted to gene expression studies, functional analysis of a gene, disease modeling, and most importantly, amplification of useful protein products. The GMOs has been introduced in a variety of fields including drug development, agricultural and food biotechnology, industrial product manufacturing and culturing/modeling laboratory experiments.

Why GMOs

Genetically modified organisms provide novel intersections in the pathway elude the today’s society of diseases, poverty and hunger. Many scientists argue that these GMOs have been widely used in the process of drug development to prepare various pharmaceutically important drugs by formation of chimeric proteins. The two most significant examples include insulin and humanized immunoglobins (antibodies). The large scale insulin production has only been made possible by cloning the human insulin gene in bacteria to amplify the final product. This has made the ‘drug’ less expensive and thus, affordable for a common man in most of the countries. The humanized immunoglobins are th...

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...nsgenic maize NK603xMON810 fed in long term reproduction studies in mice. Unpublished report: Institute fur Ernahrung, Austria.

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