Gene Technologies
So this week for me has been all about revision and I was in the middle of revising gene technologies in biology, when I thought about how they can be used in veterinary medicine. Now some of the things I'm going to mention have many ethical arguments behind them which I understand however I am only mentioning the possibilities of the gene technologies.
Firstly I was revising how to amplify a gene, now I wont go into depth about each method but here are he names of the ones we studies, PCR, using reverse transcriptase, using restriction endonucleases and using a gene machine. All of these produce a fragment that can then be amplified using vectors or the PCR. Now the uses of this recombinant DNA are vast, for veterinary and medicine in particular this DNA can be used to produce insulin cheaply and humanely for people and animals with type one diabetes. Alone the same line as that the DNA can be used to produce drugs and vaccines quickly and in large amounts, which makes them cheaper and accessible to more people. This DNA also has the possibility to be inserted into the embryos of animals to give them favourable characteristics. But there are some concerns to these possibilities, large drug companies could limit the use of these specialist drugs and prevent lives from being saved. People could also take it too far and create designer babies or animals, and there is the debate of who would own the DNA the person it came from or the company that did the research and used the DNA to create and new technology?
Then you come onto gene therapy, this is the process by which faulty or defective genes are altered to treat things like genetic disorders and cancer. If the disorder is known to be caused by a recessive allele then the therapy is only inserting a dominant allele to mask the recessive however if the disorder is caused by a dominant then a section of non coding DNA has to be inserted into the middle of the allele to interrupt it. There are two types of gene therapy somatic this is when the DNA is only altered in the cells that are affected, or there's germ line gene therapy at the moment this is illegal but I still want to mention it, it is when the sex cells are altered so that offspring don't get the disorder and won't suffer. I think that this process if governed properly could help eradicate genetic defects in some dog breeds and could allow them to be without pain and live longer healthier lives.
Next comes genetic screening and fingerprinting, and example of this would be gel electrophoresis which can be used to test for genetic disorders and to see if say a cancer is caused by a specific mutation and a specific drug treatment can be given that is proven to work effectively. other uses are preventing inbreeding in animals I think this is very important, in humans its illegal so why should it be allowed in animals, it could cause them just as much harm, anyway moving on. the ability to use this technology means that gene pools aren't made smaller and also the test can be done to prove pedigree. All of these things I think are important and as these technologies develop it becomes cheaper to carry out the test, in the news this week I saw an article about inbreeding in dogs and the genetic disorders that run in breeds, well with what I mentioned today we could eradicate these disorders and prevent inbreeding in the future.
Anyway thank you for reading I hope you enjoyed it. You probably know everything I just wrote but hey ho I find it interesting and all very new.
Firstly I was revising how to amplify a gene, now I wont go into depth about each method but here are he names of the ones we studies, PCR, using reverse transcriptase, using restriction endonucleases and using a gene machine. All of these produce a fragment that can then be amplified using vectors or the PCR. Now the uses of this recombinant DNA are vast, for veterinary and medicine in particular this DNA can be used to produce insulin cheaply and humanely for people and animals with type one diabetes. Alone the same line as that the DNA can be used to produce drugs and vaccines quickly and in large amounts, which makes them cheaper and accessible to more people. This DNA also has the possibility to be inserted into the embryos of animals to give them favourable characteristics. But there are some concerns to these possibilities, large drug companies could limit the use of these specialist drugs and prevent lives from being saved. People could also take it too far and create designer babies or animals, and there is the debate of who would own the DNA the person it came from or the company that did the research and used the DNA to create and new technology?
Then you come onto gene therapy, this is the process by which faulty or defective genes are altered to treat things like genetic disorders and cancer. If the disorder is known to be caused by a recessive allele then the therapy is only inserting a dominant allele to mask the recessive however if the disorder is caused by a dominant then a section of non coding DNA has to be inserted into the middle of the allele to interrupt it. There are two types of gene therapy somatic this is when the DNA is only altered in the cells that are affected, or there's germ line gene therapy at the moment this is illegal but I still want to mention it, it is when the sex cells are altered so that offspring don't get the disorder and won't suffer. I think that this process if governed properly could help eradicate genetic defects in some dog breeds and could allow them to be without pain and live longer healthier lives.
Next comes genetic screening and fingerprinting, and example of this would be gel electrophoresis which can be used to test for genetic disorders and to see if say a cancer is caused by a specific mutation and a specific drug treatment can be given that is proven to work effectively. other uses are preventing inbreeding in animals I think this is very important, in humans its illegal so why should it be allowed in animals, it could cause them just as much harm, anyway moving on. the ability to use this technology means that gene pools aren't made smaller and also the test can be done to prove pedigree. All of these things I think are important and as these technologies develop it becomes cheaper to carry out the test, in the news this week I saw an article about inbreeding in dogs and the genetic disorders that run in breeds, well with what I mentioned today we could eradicate these disorders and prevent inbreeding in the future.
Anyway thank you for reading I hope you enjoyed it. You probably know everything I just wrote but hey ho I find it interesting and all very new.
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