Genetic Engineering

• Genetic Engineering - the deliberate modification of an organism's DNA in order to change its phenotype
• Gene therapy is used to treat genetic diseases by replacing faulty genes with healthy ones.
• Genetic Engineering can mean changing one base pair, deleting a section of DNA, or adding an additional copy of a gene from the same organism (gene therapy)

  It can also involve replacing a section of DNA from one organism with a desired piece of DNA from another. This process is called Recombinant DNA
• Recombinant DNA - replacing a section of DNA from one organism with the DNA for a desired trait from another organism

  The resulting organism is transgenic
• Recombinant DNA works by:

  1 The desired gene is "cut out" of an organisms DNA using a restriction enzyme. The restriction enzyme cuts the DNA at a specific base sequence which can result in straight-edged pieces of DNA called blunt ends however it tends to result in uneven edged pieces of DNA called sticky ends.

  2 A small piece of circular DNA (plasmid) is removed from a bacteria