Gene Technology - Admission/Application Essay Example

Genetically modified organisms also called GMOs are plants, animals or microorganisms that have been changed through genetic engineering. In its tern genetic engineering is a brand which is well known today. It is a technique that makes direct manipulation with organisms` genome in order to make possible the production of new substances or new functions. Nowadays this technique became more popular for crop plants than indirect methods of changing organisms such as breeding and mutagenesis used for hundreds of years. P. Roland (2011) noticed that in contrast to conventional methods of genetic modifications that introduce many uncharacterized genes into new created varieties genetic engineering introduce into a plant species only one or a few genes with well known characteristics.

But genetic engineering became possible only after 1953 when British chemist Francis Crick and the American biologist James Watson determined a chemical explanation for a gene. They discovered the chemical structure for large complex molecules that present in the nuclei of all living cells, known as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). They demonstrated that DNA molecules are long chains or units made of a combination of a simple sugar and a phosphate group. And along this chain four nitrogen bases occurred in DNA (adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine) are arranged in particular sequences.

The order of nitrogen bases along a DNA molecule represents a kind of genetic code for the cell in which molecule occur. So genetic code is a set of nitrogen base combinations that act as code for the production of certain amino acids. And a long chain of amino acids arranged in particular sequence forms proteins which control all the traits in living organisms. The greatest feature of DNA molecule is that it can be passed on from generation to generation without changes as it can copy itself.

This knowledge about DNA molecules and genes give new possibilities for