2007 Pathways and Access to Careers in Technology
Field Team Research Group 7E: Genetic Engineering

Our Group Members include: Laura Flynn, James Tillman, Jacob Wyte,
and Warren Gates.

Our PACT Challenge: To learn how biotechnology works in all areas
of life. Also to learn how to extract and process DNA.

The facts we learned about DNA Extraction: There are 200,000
combinations of DNA. The electric currents causes the DNA to move
from the negatively charged side to the positively charged side. You
don't want contamination in the gels when extracting DNA, because
results are crucial.

The facts we learned about genetic alterations: You can make food
that isn\'t affected by bugs. You can put medicine in the foods you
eat insterad of actually getting the shot to be healthy. (For example
bananas, and anti-freeze strawberries).

The facts we learned about bioengineering: The study of tools from
living things. You are able to alter different organisms. It can help
cut down on the use of different pesticides.

We learned how to extract DNA and highlight identifying
characteristics of individuals utilizing groundbreaking
biotechnology to solve the challenge.  To successfully
identify the culprit we had to: We put DNA into wells. Then once
all of them were filled we put carbon strips on each side. Next we
used 50 watts of electricity. Finally we stained it and study who
was the culprit.

Based on these studies and our suspect identification
techniques our recommendation to the crime
lab of Stemville, KY is: Genetic Engineering Genetic engineering is
not merely producing a twin or multiple twins of an individual, but
actually changing the genetic makeup of a person. The steps
themselves seem quite simple but its harder than it looks. There
are four steps in this process. A portion of the donor\'s DNA carrying
the right gene is snipped out using restriction enzymes. A special
ring of DNA is spliced into the plasmid, which is sealed up with DNA
ligase and introduced into bacteria. The bacteria then reproduces.
An important factor of genetic engineering is that if someone can't
fight off diseases than they can replace the genes with better ones.
The negative side to this is if you take the genes from someone who
is likely to have cancer, the person you put those genes into now have
that same chance of getting cancer or any other desease that person
was prone to getting. There are many examples of genetic engineering
some of them include: taking the genes from a fish resistant to freezing
and putting them into strawberries. Another example is Dolly the sheep
(the first mammal to ever be cloned sucessfully). GMO's (Genetically
Modified Organisms) are very closely related to genetic engineering.
The only difference is that GMO transfers DNA when genetic
engineering transfers specific genes. Therefore genetic engineering
will be very important in the future.