MAD SCIENCE?¿
Vaccines within a
banana? It may sound as science fiction. Eggs which help to cure cancer? It's
been done. Evgen plants that reduce the amount of air pollution have been
invented.
These new genetically
modified organisms exist thanks to an alternation in the DNA when being
combined with another one. Many of these could bring important advanteges in
our every-deay life. Here I show you some of the weirdest outcomes of genetic
enginnering.
Pollution fighting plants:
Scientists at the University of
Washington areengineering poplar trees taht can clean up contamination
sites by absorbing groundwater pollutants through their roots. The plants
then break the pollutants down into harmless byproducts that are incorporated
into their roots, stems and leaves or released into the air.
In laboratory tests, the transgenic plants are able to
remove as much as 91 percent of trichloroethylene — the most common groundwater
contaminant at U.S. Superfund sites — out of a liquid solution. Regular poplar
plants removed just 3 percent of the contaminant.
Web-spinning
goats:
Strong,
flexible spider silk is one of the most valuable materials in nature, and it
could be used to make an array of products — from artificial ligaments to
parachute cords — if we could just produce it on a commercial scale. In 2000,
Nexia Biotechnologies announced it had the answer: a goat that produced
spiders’ web protein in its milk.
Researchers
inserted a spiders’ dragline silk gene into the goats’ DNA in such a way that
the goats would make the silk protein only in their milk. This “silk milk”
could then be used to manufacture a web-like material called Biosteel.
Banana vaccines:
People may soon be getting vaccinated for diseases
like hepatitis B and cholera by simply taking a bite of banana. Researchers
have successfully engineered bananas, potatoes, lettuce, carrots and tobacco to
produce vaccines, but they say bananas are the ideal production and delivery
vehicle.
When an altered form of a virus is injected into a
banana sapling, the virus’ genetic material quickly becomes a permanent part of
the plant’s cells. As the plant grows, its cells produce the virus proteins —
but not the infectious part of the virus. When people eat a bite of
a genetically engineered banana, which is full of virus proteins, their
immune systems build up antibodies to fight the disease — just like a
traditional vaccine.
British scientists have created a breed of genetically
modified hens that produce cancer-fighting medicines in their eggs. The animals
have had human genes added to their DNA so that human proteins are secreted
into the whites of their eggs, along with complex medicinal proteins similar to
drugs used to treat skin cancer and other diseases.
All this breakthroughs
in bioenginnering may sound incredibly delightful, however there are some risks
that could be followed by an unexpected realise into society. Have you thought
about this before???
