The movie begins in a molecular biology laboratory. Among the test tubes containing several colored liquids you see Dr. Nekhorvich, a decent looking old man with his spectacles trying to hide the apparent fright in his eyes. As he gets himself ready to inject a red liquid into his veins, you hear on the backdrop:
"Every search for a hero must begin with something which every hero requires, a villain."
There have been some mingling with the DNA of what is in the red liquid. They called it 'Chimera', the villain. It is a virus which when administered to a person will kill him unless he is given with an antidote within the next 20 hours. Make a story around it and bring Tom Cruise.
BOOM! Mission Impossible 2 is a hit!
Genetic engineering has been the love of many science fiction directors and writers since the last two decades or so. Another example of a much recent movie is Jurassic World wherein the Indominus rex was a dinosaur made by getting genes from several early dinosaurs and some modern day animals. Then there's The Island, The Matrix series and many more films which circle around the stuff scientists do with DNA. I wonder why biologists in movies are displayed as preoccupied vicious creatures who are intelligent enough to develop these exquisite species but then are dumb enough too to let their creations destroy the world! Never mind, let's get to the point.
Ever wondered how these scientists make chimeras {organisms with new (recombinant) DNA}?
Interesting, isn't it? Making super species for our own good by some interchanging and placing of DNA! Moreover, this idea is something beyond robots. People have been thinking of inculcating feelings to a network of Integrated Circuits, but through genetic engineering one creates a fully developed organism who doesn't need battery recharging and where pondering over forming feelings is something pretty secondary! And the best part is that though such 'çhimeras' are not being developed right now but the basic technique to do such weird stuff has been introduced and is in full swing of development. So, we don't usually see genetically modified humans around us, however, there's a potential in this technique to make this very thought a reality. It's called the Recombinant DNA Technology (RDT) wherein DNA from at least two different organisms are combined to form a new recombined DNA. It's awfully intriguing how the genius minds of geneticists and molecular biologists found a way to cut out genes from an organism and recombine it with genes obtained form others and put it into hosts which would express the genes perfectly.
Here I'll be writing one of the aspects of the whole process - how do they cut genes?
We have scissors for papers, knifes for vegetables, drillers for land but what we need to cut is DNA and no doubt DNA is a biomolecule which would need another 'biological substance' to cut it. Now when biologists 'need' something for a purpose they don't simply make it like the other engineers do because of the complexities rendered by a biological system. Instead, biologists search for something somewhere in the nature that's already doing the job needed. So what our scientists wanted here was a substance, already existing in nature, that could cut DNA.
Voila! It turns out that the DNA cutting process was already happening inside bacteria by small proteinacious substances called the "RESTRICTION ENZYMES" of the Restriction Modification System.
The Restriction modification system is like an immune system in bacteria. Whenever a bacteria is infected by a virus, the virus leaves its DNA into the bacteria. Now for the bacteria, the viral DNA is something to be afraid of! To save itself from the viral DNA the restriction enzymes of bacteria comes to the rescue. These enzymes cut the viral DNA thus making it ineffective. Eventually, our bacteria stays healthy! These restriction enzymes were extracted out and used as a DNA cutting tool by biologists. There are special DNA sequences that different restriction enzymes cleave (eg: EcoR1 cleaves GAATTC) which enabled our scientists to cut DNA as per their requirements.
So there you are! If nature's got problems, the solutions to those are hidden among the peculiar systems of nature itself. You just need to find it out!
Enzyme named HindII was first extracted in 1970 from the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae strain Rd. More than 900 such enzymes from 230 different bacteria have been isolated till date.
Now some of you 'genius brains' might be thinking - If restriction enzymes cleave DNA then why doesn't the bacterial restriction enzymes cut its own DNA?
Bacterium's not a dumb thing, you know! It modifies its own DNA, thus making it unrecognizable by its own restriction enzymes. Eg: methylation of adenine residues by EcoR1 methylase. ( It's perfectly fine if you didn't get the example in your head if you are not into biology. But in case you are a biology student, it's not!). So the modified bacterial DNA won't be cleaved by the enzymes and the bacteria will live on.
That's how the restriction modification system in bacteria works.
So now you know how restriction enzymes became the major tool to cut DNA for genetic engineers performing RDT (Recombinant DNA Technology). Sure, RDT has not been developed to make designer babies or superhumans but we are surrounded by fruits and vegetables obtained from genetically modified plants. Mutants of microbes are being selected as well as genetically modified for higher production of industrial potent goods.
Imagine the time when computer coding has just been introduced and the software engineers are lauding about their potential to develop Macs and Microsofts (Operating Systems). The engineers are however denied to do the same by the conservationists for it would produce generations of humans who'd be entirely depending on the systems. Though there's a tremendous scope of doing wonderful and revolutionary stuff with the OS as the engineers believe, but conservationists are afraid of its wrong usage and the fact that common man would just then stare at his phone all day and stop connecting with nature!
Today's genetic engineers are the software engineers of the time you just imagined. The only difference lies in the higher profoundness of not accepting the new in the conservationist's mind.
"Every search for a hero must begin with something which every hero requires, a villain."
There have been some mingling with the DNA of what is in the red liquid. They called it 'Chimera', the villain. It is a virus which when administered to a person will kill him unless he is given with an antidote within the next 20 hours. Make a story around it and bring Tom Cruise.
BOOM! Mission Impossible 2 is a hit!
Genetic engineering has been the love of many science fiction directors and writers since the last two decades or so. Another example of a much recent movie is Jurassic World wherein the Indominus rex was a dinosaur made by getting genes from several early dinosaurs and some modern day animals. Then there's The Island, The Matrix series and many more films which circle around the stuff scientists do with DNA. I wonder why biologists in movies are displayed as preoccupied vicious creatures who are intelligent enough to develop these exquisite species but then are dumb enough too to let their creations destroy the world! Never mind, let's get to the point.
Ever wondered how these scientists make chimeras {organisms with new (recombinant) DNA}?
Interesting, isn't it? Making super species for our own good by some interchanging and placing of DNA! Moreover, this idea is something beyond robots. People have been thinking of inculcating feelings to a network of Integrated Circuits, but through genetic engineering one creates a fully developed organism who doesn't need battery recharging and where pondering over forming feelings is something pretty secondary! And the best part is that though such 'çhimeras' are not being developed right now but the basic technique to do such weird stuff has been introduced and is in full swing of development. So, we don't usually see genetically modified humans around us, however, there's a potential in this technique to make this very thought a reality. It's called the Recombinant DNA Technology (RDT) wherein DNA from at least two different organisms are combined to form a new recombined DNA. It's awfully intriguing how the genius minds of geneticists and molecular biologists found a way to cut out genes from an organism and recombine it with genes obtained form others and put it into hosts which would express the genes perfectly.
Here I'll be writing one of the aspects of the whole process - how do they cut genes?
We have scissors for papers, knifes for vegetables, drillers for land but what we need to cut is DNA and no doubt DNA is a biomolecule which would need another 'biological substance' to cut it. Now when biologists 'need' something for a purpose they don't simply make it like the other engineers do because of the complexities rendered by a biological system. Instead, biologists search for something somewhere in the nature that's already doing the job needed. So what our scientists wanted here was a substance, already existing in nature, that could cut DNA.
Voila! It turns out that the DNA cutting process was already happening inside bacteria by small proteinacious substances called the "RESTRICTION ENZYMES" of the Restriction Modification System.
The Restriction modification system is like an immune system in bacteria. Whenever a bacteria is infected by a virus, the virus leaves its DNA into the bacteria. Now for the bacteria, the viral DNA is something to be afraid of! To save itself from the viral DNA the restriction enzymes of bacteria comes to the rescue. These enzymes cut the viral DNA thus making it ineffective. Eventually, our bacteria stays healthy! These restriction enzymes were extracted out and used as a DNA cutting tool by biologists. There are special DNA sequences that different restriction enzymes cleave (eg: EcoR1 cleaves GAATTC) which enabled our scientists to cut DNA as per their requirements.
So there you are! If nature's got problems, the solutions to those are hidden among the peculiar systems of nature itself. You just need to find it out!
Enzyme named HindII was first extracted in 1970 from the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae strain Rd. More than 900 such enzymes from 230 different bacteria have been isolated till date.
Now some of you 'genius brains' might be thinking - If restriction enzymes cleave DNA then why doesn't the bacterial restriction enzymes cut its own DNA?
Bacterium's not a dumb thing, you know! It modifies its own DNA, thus making it unrecognizable by its own restriction enzymes. Eg: methylation of adenine residues by EcoR1 methylase. ( It's perfectly fine if you didn't get the example in your head if you are not into biology. But in case you are a biology student, it's not!). So the modified bacterial DNA won't be cleaved by the enzymes and the bacteria will live on.
That's how the restriction modification system in bacteria works.
So now you know how restriction enzymes became the major tool to cut DNA for genetic engineers performing RDT (Recombinant DNA Technology). Sure, RDT has not been developed to make designer babies or superhumans but we are surrounded by fruits and vegetables obtained from genetically modified plants. Mutants of microbes are being selected as well as genetically modified for higher production of industrial potent goods.
Imagine the time when computer coding has just been introduced and the software engineers are lauding about their potential to develop Macs and Microsofts (Operating Systems). The engineers are however denied to do the same by the conservationists for it would produce generations of humans who'd be entirely depending on the systems. Though there's a tremendous scope of doing wonderful and revolutionary stuff with the OS as the engineers believe, but conservationists are afraid of its wrong usage and the fact that common man would just then stare at his phone all day and stop connecting with nature!
Today's genetic engineers are the software engineers of the time you just imagined. The only difference lies in the higher profoundness of not accepting the new in the conservationist's mind.
