We have mentioned previously that it is

possible to insert DNA from one organism to

another
These are known as transgenic organisms

These have many uses

Production of human proteins (such as insulin) in
bacteria
Modified crops to increase yield

But the more notable, and controversial,

transgenic organisms would be clones

Scientists have developed methods to make

genetic copies (clones) of entire organisms
The problem came from the fact that cells
will differentiate during the embryonic
stage, and could not revert back
The answer came when it was discovered
that cells in G0 could be forced into a
totipotent stage
This was first successfully performed in
1996 with the creation of Dolly

Dolly was created by removing a mammary

cell from an adult sheep
The cell was forced into G0, and its nucleus
removed
An egg cell from another sheep was
removed, and its nucleus was removed
The nucleus from Dollys donor was inserted,
and the egg was implanted into a womb
The lamb that was born (Dolly) was the
genetic copy of the donor

Dolly was euthanized when she was 6

Most sheep live 10-12 years

It was speculated that her genetic age was

older than her birth age
Her telomeres were artificially short, since
she was cloned from an older sheep
This raised questions about the viability of
cloned organisms

Blood and tissue samples are often left at

particularly violent crime scenes
Scientists used to use blood type as a
method of indentifying a defendant

However, this only proves if a person is innocent

DNA fingerprinting (now called profiling) can

indentify the guilty individual with a much
higher certainty
A few different methods have been used

Many of the technologies we have

discussed are used to directly assist
humans
In particular, DNA fingerprinting has
become quite useful

Restriction fragment length polymorphism

Restriction enzymes are added to suspects
DNA, and samples of DNA at crime scene
The length of introns is variable in a
population
When a gel is ran, the two samples are
compared

More recently, variation in the lengths of

satellite DNA have been used
These are repeats of the same 1-10
nucleotides, and are highly variable in
humans

Restriction enzymes are still used

Started in 1990, projected completion by

2005
Essentially completed in 2000, officially
announced in 2003
First found sequence of small sequences far
apart

Used these as makers

Cut the genome up into many smaller

segments, and sequenced these separately
Computer analyzed to find areas of overlap

Aligned these, with markers, to get

complete version
Called this shotgun sequencing
Next up was to look for genes
Scan for promoting regions
Then, have to differentiate between intron
regions and exon regions
Indentifying the genes is the first step in
gene therapy
Is the proper sequence is known, a strand
can be engineered into a virus, and inserted
into a patient