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  • W.B.C.S. Examination Notes On – Genetic Engineering – Zoology.
    Posted on January 13th, 2020 in Zoology
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    W.B.C.S. Examination Notes On – Genetic Engineering – Zoology.

    WBCS পরীক্ষার নোট  – জেনেটিক ইঞ্জিনিয়ারিং – প্রাণীবিদ্যা।

    • W.B.C.S. Exam is conducted by PSC, WB in three stages- Prelims, Mains and Interview. The marks you fetch in W.B.C.S. Mains Exam decide your ranking in the final list. The WBCS Mains exam has 8 papers, including twp optional papers. Zoology is an optional subject for Civil Services Mains examination. Zoology requires a huge amount of hard work. This optional paper is also quite lengthy. Aspirants should be thorough with the syllabus. Knowing the syllabus will help you to understand what to study what not to study.Genetic engineering, sometimes called genetic modification, is the process of altering the DNA in an organism’s genome.Continue Reading W.B.C.S. Examination Notes On – Genetic Engineering – Zoology.
    • This may mean changing one base pair? (A-T or C-G), deleting a whole region of DNA, or introducing an additional copy of a gene?.
    • It may also mean extracting DNA from another organism’s genome and combining it with the DNA of that individual.
    • Genetic engineering is used by scientists to enhance or modify the characteristics of an individual organism.
    • Genetic engineering can be applied to any organism, from a virus to a sheep.
    •  For example, genetic engineering can be used to produce plants that have a higher nutritional value or can tolerate exposure to herbicides.

    To help explain the process of genetic engineering we have taken the example of insulin, a protein? that helps regulate the sugar levels in our blood.

    • Normally insulin? is produced in the pancreas?, but in people with type 1 diabetes? there is a problem with insulin production.
    • People with diabetes therefore have to inject insulin to control their blood sugar levels.
    • Genetic engineering has been used to produce a type of insulin, very similar to our own, from yeast and bacteria like E. coli
    • This genetically modified insulin, ‘Humulin’ was licensed for human use in 1982.

    The genetic engineering process

    1. A small piece of circular DNA called a plasmid is extracted from the bacteria or yeast cell.
    2. A small section is then cut out of the circular plasmid by restriction enzymes, ‘molecular scissors’.
    3. The gene for human insulin is inserted into the gap in the plasmid. This plasmid is now genetically modified.
    4. The genetically modified plasmid is introduced into a new bacteria or yeast cell.
    5. This cell then divides rapidly and starts making insulin.
    6. To create large amounts of the cells, the genetically modified bacteria or yeast are grown in large fermentation vessels that contain all the nutrients they need. The more the cells divide, the more insulin is produced.
    7. When fermentation is complete, the mixture is filtered to release the insulin.
    8. The insulin is then purified and packaged into bottles and insulin pens for distribution to patients with diabetes.

    The term genetic engineering initially referred to various techniques used for the modification or manipulation of organisms through the processes of heredity and reproduction. As such, the term embraced both artificial selection and all the interventions of biomedical techniques, among them artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization (e.g., “test-tube” babies), cloning, and gene manipulation. In the latter part of the 20th century, however, the term came to refer more specifically to methods of recombinant DNA technology (or gene cloning), in which DNA molecules from two or more sources are combined either within cells or in vitro and are then inserted into host organisms in which they are able to propagate.Click here to find the Syllabus for Zoology in WBCS Exam.

    The possibility for recombinant DNA technology emerged with the discovery of restriction enzymes in 1968 by Swiss microbiologist Werner Arber. The following year American microbiologist Hamilton O. Smith purified so-called type II restriction enzymes, which were found to be essential to genetic engineering for their ability to cleave a specific site within the DNA (as opposed to type I restriction enzymes, which cleave DNA at random sites). Drawing on Smith’s work, American molecular biologist Daniel Nathans helped advance the technique of DNA recombination in 1970–71 and demonstrated that type II enzymes could be useful in genetic studies. Genetic engineering based on recombination was pioneered in 1973 by American biochemists Stanley N. Cohen and Herbert W. Boyer, who were among the first to cut DNA into fragments, rejoin different fragments, and insert the new genes into E. coli bacteria, which then reproduced.

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