Genetic Engineering

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Genetic Engineering

• Bioethics

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Who we are

• University of Chicago iGEM team
• International Genetically Engineered Machines
  Competition
• Create a genetically modified organism or
  machine every summer
• 10 weeks, 6-12 undergraduates and highschoolers
• 1 weekend at MIT
• Lots of prizes

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What is Genetic Engineering?
?
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Who are Genetic Engineers?

• Mother nature

• Farmers

• Scientists

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Spider Silk

• Creation of artificial spider silk by Nexia, a
  biotech company
• Spider silk protein created by goats in their
  milk, then spun into silk
• However, still not comparable to actual
  spidersilk

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Insulin

• Insulinoriginally isolated from cows and pigs
• 1982 Humulin, a biosynthetic human insulin
• Attempting to optimize insulin production by
  expressing them in different things
• Insert human insulin gene into bacteria

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Penicillin

• Directed evolution of penicillin strains
• Inserted genes to make erythromycin (penicillin
  substitute) into E Coli, which totally worked

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Genetic Engineered Foods I
Pros

• Pest resistance
• Herbicide tolerance
• Disease resistance
• Cold/drought tolerance
• More nutrition
• Soil remediation

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Genetic Engineer Foods II
Case Study

• Pusztai potato data
• Pusztai reportedly fed rats potatoes genetically
  modified to have snowdrop lectin (which is an
  insecticide). the rats had stunted growth
  immune system damage
• Controversy confusion over the lectin was from
  snowdrop (cool) or jackbean (poisonous)
• research republished in october 1999, reviewed by
  6 reviewers. "he paper did not mention stunted
  growth or immunity issues, but reported that rats
  fed on potatoes genetically modified with the
  snowdrop lectin had "thickening in the mucosal
  lining of their colon and their jejunum" when
  compared with rats fed on non modified potatoes"

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Genetic Engineered Foods Fears

• "Human health effects can include higher risks of
  toxicity, allergenicity, antibiotic resistance,
  immune-suppression and cancer. As for
  environmental impacts, the use of genetic
  engineering in agriculture could lead to
  uncontrolled biological pollution, threatening
  numerous microbial, plant and animal species with
  extinction, and the potential contamination of
  non-genetically engineered life forms with novel
  and possibly hazardous genetic material."
  (http//www.centerforfoodsafety.org/geneticall7.cf
  m)
• Unintended harm to other organisms
• Reduced effectiveness of pesticides
• Gene transfer to non-target species
• Allergies
• Unknown effects

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Genetic Engineered Foods IV
Official Word on Safety

• Royal Society of Medicine says no ill effects
  from GM foods
• US National Academies of Sciences says no ill
  effects from GM foods
• Sources
• RSM http//jrsm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/content/full/
  101/6/290
• US NAS http//www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id1
  0977toc
• What people are worried about are LONG TERM
  effects everything is based on only 15 years of
  research

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Ethics

• good summary of fears http//www.actionbioscience
  .org/biotech/glenn.html
• crossing species boundaries? (blurring the line
  btwn people and other things)
• disease transmission - antibiotic strains of
  stuff that weren't antibiotic
• alteration of animals for food
• Altered species w/ human genes - humans?
• genetic alteration of kids/eugenics
• Foodchain issues/local, global effects