Torn Genes Case Study

Eturnitee Z. Walker

Dr. Powell

CBIO 112-03

2 March 2015

Study Questions

1. The FDA is responsible for protecting public health in the regulation of the nation’s food supply.

2. The FDA determined that genetically engineered foods should be regulated like regular foods. There are no regulations to date that have been determined that are specific to genetically engineered foods.

3. Scientists put a gene from one into another by agrobacterium. Bacteria reproduced quickly, it is easy to create the same favorable gene. The bacterium causes the plant to send it nutrients and they take one piece of the plants DNA and put the favorable DNA into the plant.

4. In artificial selection, there is a wider variety of genes that may be selected from within a generation, giving more diversity within a group. Transgenic methods of altering crops involve placing new genes into a certain generation of plants, which makes them identical and gives the generation a higher mortality rate due to illness that would affect each plant the same.

5. New allergens could be created within the genetically altered foods that could be unknown to those sensitive to it. Antibiotic resistances that are carried within genetically modified foods could move onto pathogens, making them resistant.

6. Gene markers can be used to replace faulty proteins within DNA with normal ones. These genes are placed into a bacterium and are reproduced within the functioning gene from another source.

7. A mutation is a change in the DNA the hereditary material of life, a mutation can be beneficial and essential to evolution because it is the raw material of genetic variation and without mutation evolution could not occur within the course of maybe millions of years, but most of random mutations could be harmful because it can effect individual species by causing many inherited diseases like sickle-cell disease and cystic fibrosis. It can also cause various kinds of cancer. Mutation can...