Arabel Joie G.

Arevalo February 8, 2017

2014-04176
Bio 1 WFW2

The Promise and the Price

[Reflection Paper]

Truly the most amazing thing humankind could have ever discovered is the existence
of DNA. DNA is the heart of all living things here on earth. It is basically what makes a
living thing alive and is responsible for the continuity of life. Not only does DNA have a role
on reproduction but it also has significant contributions in human immunity, genetics and
criminal investigations. While the infinite applications of the discovery of DNA help us in a
lot of ways, there are also consequences when we play too much with it. This was discussed
in the film and will be tackled in this paper briefly.
Our knowledge of DNA begins with what we call the Photo 51. In my MBB 1 class,
we watched a film entitled exactly just that and exposed the truth on how DNA was really
discovered and who played a primary role in its discovery. What high school teaches us as
the primary contributors of possibly the most important discovery about human life (James
Watson and Francis Crick) was challenged by this film. Here, we saw the entry of a name
called Rosalind Franklin and how she really was the first to deduce its existence and give a
faint idea about its structure. Because of politics and sexism that existed during the time,
credit was instead given to James Watson and Francis Crick and it was only until Rosalind
was dead that she was given proper recognition for her significant contribution.
From then on (and up until now), numerous other findings were contributed to the
understanding of DNA which resulted to a complex network of information about it. Our
DNA is a long strand of double-helix structure made up of complementing nitrogenous bases
and a sugar-phosphate backbone that supports it. It is in fact so long that it has to be tightly
packed into the nucleus just so it could fit in there and we only know of its “uncoiling” during
cell division. The nitrogenous bases play an important part because they’re essentially codes
for commands which the cell carries out. It undergoes three processes: Replication, the
copying of one strand of DNA resulting in a complement strand; Transcription of the
complement strand into something understandable by the RNA and; Translation which codes
the specific amino acids to be activated.
From this structure and processes, scientists have found ways to manipulate our DNA
to come up with new methods that could improve life in many aspects. One example
mentioned is gene therapy where we insert a fully working gene into the DNA to produce a
different code for a specific action. Another is RNA interference, which, coming from its
name, interferes or blocks the message from getting transcripted and translated to RNA.
Lastly, and the most widely-used, is stem cell therapy which makes use of what we call stem
cells or immature cells that we delegate to cell-needing sites because they still have the power
to become any cell its environment nurtures them to be.
With these advances in science come consequences. The development and practice of
these techniques surely didn’t work 100% of the time. Price had to be paid both literally (as
experimenting sure isn’t cheap) and figuratively. For animal rights activists, the use of
laboratory rats is still questionable and its applications for testing to humans still give error
which sometimes results to a severe disability and sometimes death. For spiritualistic people,
they feel uncomfortable about the thought of having to interfere with the course of nature as it
isn’t natural to manipulate things and they believe nature will take its revenge someday. As
the title suggests, with the promise of new discoveries and a better life will always come
consequences or a price to be paid for breakthroughs that follow.