Category Archives: Transhuman News

Fernando PardoManuel-de-VillenaChairProfessorUNC Department of Genetics

The mission of the department is to provide basic and applied genetic/genomic research, education and training at the interface between biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, mathematics, the social sciences, public health and medicine in order to have a profound effect on how medicine will be practiced in the future.

Our graduate programs train students to be creative, sophisticated research scientists prepared to pursue careers focused in genetics and genomics working in academic science, government, or commercial positions. Students conduct their dissertation research using diverse experimental approaches from classical genetics to the most modern molecular methods to address a broad range of contemporary problems in biomedical science.

The Department also includes a clinical arm focused on medical genetics, which covers the broad spectrum of clinical genetic research from disease prevention to diagnosis and treatment. This specialty includes evaluation, mutation discovery, counseling and risk assessment through analysis and genetic testing. Locating the clinical group alongside basic scientists facilitates integration of cutting edge genetic research with patient care.

View post:
Welcome to the UNC Department of Genetics | Department of Genetics

Global Genetically Modified Crops Market Is Projected To Grow At A 6% Rate Through The Forecast Period  EIN News

See the rest here:
Global Genetically Modified Crops Market Is Projected To Grow At A 6% Rate Through The Forecast Period - EIN News

Feed Your Mind Main Page

en Espaol (Spanish)

Genetic engineering is often used in combination with traditional breeding to produce the genetically engineered plant varieties on the market today.

For thousands of years, humans have been using traditional modification methods like selective breeding and cross-breeding to breed plants and animals with more desirable traits. For example, early farmers developed cross-breeding methods to grow corn with a range of colors, sizes, and uses. Todays strawberries are a cross between a strawberry species native to North America and a strawberry species native to South America.

Most of the foods we eat today were created through traditional breeding methods. But changing plants and animals through traditional breeding can take a long time, and it is difficult to make very specific changes. After scientists developed genetic engineering in the 1970s, they were able to make similar changes in a more specific way and in a shorter amount of time.

A Timeline of Genetic Modification in Modern Agriculture

PDF: 152KB

Circa 8000 BCE: Humans use traditional modification methods like selective breeding and cross-breeding to breed plants and animals with more desirable traits.

1866: Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, breeds two different types of peas and identifies the basic process of genetics.

1922: The first hybrid corn is produced and sold commercially.

1940: Plant breeders learn to use radiation or chemicals to randomly change an organisms DNA.

1953: Building on the discoveries of chemist Rosalind Franklin, scientists James Watson and Francis Crick identify the structure of DNA.

1973: Biochemists Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen develop genetic engineering by inserting DNA from one bacteria into another.

1982: FDA approves the first consumer GMO product developed through genetic engineering: human insulin to treat diabetes.

1986: The federal government establishes the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology. This policy describes how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) work together to regulate the safety of GMOs.

1992: FDA policy states that foods from GMO plants must meet the same requirements, including the same safety standards, as foods derived from traditionally bred plants.

1994: The first GMO produce created through genetic engineeringa GMO tomatobecomes available for sale after studies evaluated by federal agencies proved it to be as safe as traditionally bred tomatoes.

1990s: The first wave of GMO produce created through genetic engineering becomes available to consumers: summer squash, soybeans, cotton, corn, papayas, tomatoes, potatoes, and canola. Not all are still available for sale.

2003: The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations develop international guidelines and standards to determine the safety of GMO foods.

2005: GMO alfalfa and sugar beets are available for sale in the United States.

2015: FDA approves an application for the first genetic modification in an animal for use as food, a genetically engineered salmon.

2016: Congress passes a law requiring labeling for some foods produced through genetic engineering and uses the term bioengineered, which will start to appear on some foods.

2017: GMO apples are available for sale in the U.S.

2019: FDA completes consultation on first food from a genome edited plant.

2020: GMO pink pineapple is available to U.S. consumers.

2020: Application for GalSafe pig was approved.

GMO (genetically modified organism) has become the common term consumers and popular media use to describe foods that have been created through genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is a process that involves:

How Are GMOs Made? Fact Sheet

The following example gives a general idea of the steps it takes to create a GMO plant. This example uses a type of insect-resistant corn called Bt corn. Keep in mind that the processes for creating a GMO plant, animal, or microorganism may be different.

To produce a GMO plant, scientists first identify what trait they want that plant to have, such as resistance to drought, herbicides, or insects. Then, they find an organism (plant, animal, or microorganism) that already has that trait within its genes. In this example, scientists wanted to create insect-resistant corn to reduce the need to spray pesticides. They identified a gene in a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which produces a natural insecticide that has been in use for many years in traditional and organic agriculture.

After scientists find the gene with the desired trait, they copy that gene.

For Bt corn, they copied the gene in Bt that would provide the insect-resistance trait.

Next, scientists use tools to insert the gene into the DNA of the plant. By inserting the Bt gene into the DNA of the corn plant, scientists gave it the insect resistance trait.

This new trait does not change the other existing traits.

In the laboratory, scientists grow the new corn plant to ensure it has adopted the desired trait (insect resistance). If successful, scientists first grow and monitor the new corn plant (now called Bt corn because it contains a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis) in greenhouses and then in small field tests before moving it into larger field tests. GMO plants go through in-depth review and tests before they are ready to be sold to farmers.

The entire process of bringing a GMO plant to the marketplace takes several years.

Learn more about the process for creating genetically engineered microbes and genetically engineered animals.

Scientists are developing new ways to create new varieties of crops and animals using a process called genome editing. These techniques can make changes more quickly and precisely than traditional breeding methods.

There are several genome editing tools, such as CRISPR. Scientists can use these newer genome editing tools to make crops more nutritious, drought tolerant, and resistant to insect pests and diseases.

How GMOs Are Regulated in the United States

GMO Crops, Animal Food, and Beyond

How GMO Crops Impact Our World

See more here:
Science and History of GMOs and Other Food Modification Processes

Top Questions

What is genetics?

Genetics is the study ofheredityin general and ofgenesin particular. Genetics forms one of the central pillars ofbiologyand overlaps with many other areas, such as agriculture,medicine, andbiotechnology.

Is intelligence genetic?

Intelligenceis a very complex human trait, the genetics of which has been a subject of controversy for some time. Even roughly measured via diverse cognitive tests, intelligence shows a strong contribution from the environment.

How is genetic testing done?

Genetic testing typically is issued only after a medical history, a physical examination, and the construction of a family pedigree documenting familialgenetic diseaseshave been considered. The genetic tests themselves are carried out using chemical, radiological, histopathologic, and electrodiagnostic procedures. Genetic testing may involve cytogenetic analyses to investigate chromosomes, molecular assays to investigate genes and DNA, or biochemical assays to investigateenzymes,hormones, oramino acids.

Summary

genetics, study of heredity in general and of genes in particular. Genetics forms one of the central pillars of biology and overlaps with many other areas, such as agriculture, medicine, and biotechnology.

Since the dawn of civilization, humankind has recognized the influence of heredity and applied its principles to the improvement of cultivated crops and domestic animals. A Babylonian tablet more than 6,000 years old, for example, shows pedigrees of horses and indicates possible inherited characteristics. Other old carvings show cross-pollination of date palm trees. Most of the mechanisms of heredity, however, remained a mystery until the 19th century, when genetics as a systematic science began.

Genetics arose out of the identification of genes, the fundamental units responsible for heredity. Genetics may be defined as the study of genes at all levels, including the ways in which they act in the cell and the ways in which they are transmitted from parents to offspring. Modern genetics focuses on the chemical substance that genes are made of, called deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, and the ways in which it affects the chemical reactions that constitute the living processes within the cell. Gene action depends on interaction with the environment. Green plants, for example, have genes containing the information necessary to synthesize the photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll that gives them their green colour. Chlorophyll is synthesized in an environment containing light because the gene for chlorophyll is expressed only when it interacts with light. If a plant is placed in a dark environment, chlorophyll synthesis stops because the gene is no longer expressed.

Genetics as a scientific discipline stemmed from the work of Gregor Mendel in the middle of the 19th century. Mendel suspected that traits were inherited as discrete units, and, although he knew nothing of the physical or chemical nature of genes at the time, his units became the basis for the development of the present understanding of heredity. All present research in genetics can be traced back to Mendels discovery of the laws governing the inheritance of traits. The word genetics was introduced in 1905 by English biologist William Bateson, who was one of the discoverers of Mendels work and who became a champion of Mendels principles of inheritance.

Although scientific evidence for patterns of genetic inheritance did not appear until Mendels work, history shows that humankind must have been interested in heredity long before the dawn of civilization. Curiosity must first have been based on human family resemblances, such as similarity in body structure, voice, gait, and gestures. Such notions were instrumental in the establishment of family and royal dynasties. Early nomadic tribes were interested in the qualities of the animals that they herded and domesticated and, undoubtedly, bred selectively. The first human settlements that practiced farming appear to have selected crop plants with favourable qualities. Ancient tomb paintings show racehorse breeding pedigrees containing clear depictions of the inheritance of several distinct physical traits in the horses. Despite this interest, the first recorded speculations on heredity did not exist until the time of the ancient Greeks; some aspects of their ideas are still considered relevant today.

Hippocrates (c. 460c. 375 bce), known as the father of medicine, believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, and, to account for this, he devised the hypothesis known as pangenesis. He postulated that all organs of the body of a parent gave off invisible seeds, which were like miniaturized building components and were transmitted during sexual intercourse, reassembling themselves in the mothers womb to form a baby.

Aristotle (384322 bce) emphasized the importance of blood in heredity. He thought that the blood supplied generative material for building all parts of the adult body, and he reasoned that blood was the basis for passing on this generative power to the next generation. In fact, he believed that the males semen was purified blood and that a womans menstrual blood was her equivalent of semen. These male and female contributions united in the womb to produce a baby. The blood contained some type of hereditary essences, but he believed that the baby would develop under the influence of these essences, rather than being built from the essences themselves.

Aristotles ideas about the role of blood in procreation were probably the origin of the still prevalent notion that somehow the blood is involved in heredity. Today people still speak of certain traits as being in the blood and of blood lines and blood ties. The Greek model of inheritance, in which a teeming multitude of substances was invoked, differed from that of the Mendelian model. Mendels idea was that distinct differences between individuals are determined by differences in single yet powerful hereditary factors. These single hereditary factors were identified as genes. Copies of genes are transmitted through sperm and egg and guide the development of the offspring. Genes are also responsible for reproducing the distinct features of both parents that are visible in their children.

In the two millennia between the lives of Aristotle and Mendel, few new ideas were recorded on the nature of heredity. In the 17th and 18th centuries the idea of preformation was introduced. Scientists using the newly developed microscopes imagined that they could see miniature replicas of human beings inside sperm heads. French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck invoked the idea of the inheritance of acquired characters, not as an explanation for heredity but as a model for evolution. He lived at a time when the fixity of species was taken for granted, yet he maintained that this fixity was only found in a constant environment. He enunciated the law of use and disuse, which states that when certain organs become specially developed as a result of some environmental need, then that state of development is hereditary and can be passed on to progeny. He believed that in this way, over many generations, giraffes could arise from deerlike animals that had to keep stretching their necks to reach high leaves on trees.

British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace originally postulated the theory of evolution by natural selection. However, Charles Darwins observations during his circumnavigation of the globe aboard the HMS Beagle (183136) provided evidence for natural selection and his suggestion that humans and animals shared a common ancestry. Many scientists at the time believed in a hereditary mechanism that was a version of the ancient Greek idea of pangenesis, and Darwins ideas did not appear to fit with the theory of heredity that sprang from the experiments of Mendel.

Read more here:
Genetics | History, Biology, Timeline, & Facts | Britannica