Need info about Transgenesis and Transgenic Organisms?

Question

This is for a very important project, so please don't post stupid answers. I need information apart from the info given in Wikipedia. Please post as much info as is possible
Thanks!

Answer 1

Transgenic organisms are just lines of some organism that have had a gene from another organism (transgene) placed in them. This is very common to do in mice in the lab to find out what overexpression of a particular gene or a disease form a gene (often human) does.

This is now very commonplace to do in plants as a way to increase crop yields. Some of the neater examples I've read about are Bt corn and antifreeze tomatoes. The Bt corn have a insecticidal gene from the bacterial species Bacillus thuringius (sp?) engineered into all of its tissues. It is a protein and apparently completely innocuous to humans (we probably just digest it in our stomach like any other protein) and prevents the corn from being eaten by the corn borer. This also eliminates or reduces the need to spray the corn with pesticides. Tomatoes grown on a farm are often very tender and easy damaged by frost. Some lines of tomatoes have been made that express a protein from the blood of the North Atlantic flounder (I think) which prevents the fish from freezing in the extremely cold water of the Bering Straight. Expressed in the tomato (it doesn't give it a fishy flavor), it protects the tomato against frost and is fully digestable (you eat flounder, don't you?). The vast majority of many crops in the country are genetically modified in some way.

Transgenic organisms can be created in a whole bunch of different ways and it really depends on what you want to do and what organism you are taking about. It is being used more and more in the commercial sector to increase yields of crops, allow crops to be grown in areas that it formally may have had difficulty, or to make them more nutritious. Used in animals, it is mainly to determine gene function in academic and biomedical research, or in pharming (using a transgenic organism to create a biological compound of some kind- the spider silk goat and insulin producing bacteria are good examples).

This post is already long but if you have any question about this sort of thing, email me and I'll answer the best I can.

Answer 2

what exactly do you want to know about transgenic animals. Many have been created so far an old example is the human insulin forming bacteria another example it a sheep that produces either silk or webbing in it's milk. The process is basically where you take a protein making gene from one organism and transfer it to another organism. this can be accomplished through a virus or through different enzymes that break DNA at different points...there called restriction enzymes i think. There is a problem though as far as i know it really hard to know where a virus will incorporate in the genetic code. although this may be helped with transpoons. Also i believe there are some virus that that are modified so the incorporate in certain areas. If you need more info just ask

thanks

Answer 3

Produced by Genetic Modification! Of course, if you see the products in the market, many are Modified by Genetic Modification. There is a plant that was modified by genetic modification to resist disease. There are animals that were modified to be bigger, animals that glow. Many things have been done with genetic modification.

Now I can tell you a little about the process:

First, the gene is added to the DNA by some modification processes like splicing. Then they are grown. However the part where the animal is cloned is a got a confusion. He has possibly said that animals do not live after being cloned. So probably it is plants.