Lecture 1 Tuesday January 8 2008

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Biotechnology

• the technique of manipulating organisms to create good and services

sections

• food and agriculture
• medical
• environment

food and agriculture

• traditional: early forms of modifying existing organisms to create new commodities,
• selective breeding, femernation, hybridization
• this modification is achieved at the organism level not cellular level

selective breeding

• production of offspring with desired traits
• started with the Babylonians, Assyrian collection of seeds with desirable traits crossing them to create a new plant
• collecting the seeds just from the outstanding plant will increase the chances of more outstanding plants
• this is not always true but happens quite frequently
• only two or three genes were changed to get the ancient corn plant in to the fat kernelled big husk corn we know today

mutation

• a permanent change in the DNA sequence of a gene
• occurs at a low but variable rate
• effects: neutral, deleterious, lethal, beneficial
• caused by..

1. ionizing radiation
2. copying errors in genetic material
3. chemicals
4. virus infection

germ line mutations

• passed on to descendants
• occurred in a sex cell

somatic mutation

• skin cancer
• not passed through descendants

Gamma Field in Japan

• Mutations can be induced artificially and used for breeding
• round field
• gamma ray source in the middle
• artificial mutation
• huge barrier around the fields
• humans don't enter without suits
• often you can find new flowers with unique traits
• in this way, using leaf disk sampled (punching a hole in the leaf) it was found that the asian pear developed pathogen resistant trees
• neutron, sodium azide EMS, 76 gamma rays

super heros

• x men - natural variation
• fantastic four - induced variation

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