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The Domestication of Animals Was the Percursor to Genetic Engineering

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The domestication of animals 30,000 years ago was the precursor to Genetic Engineering. Starting with the dog we have since been able to introduce desirable traits in all organisms. With the discovery of plasmids in the late 60’s we have been able to take genetic engineering even further. Plasmids are small circular DNA molecules used to amplify and replicate a gene of interest. These minute molecules have the ability to replicate with the chromosome or independently, allowing them to have up to a 100 copies in one cell. Plasmids are important because of their characteristics to transfer genes that occur naturally within them or acting as a vector to introduce foreign DNA into a host cell. With the use of plasmids genetic engineers are able to use bacterial transformation to make medicines. Bacterial transformation is the process in which a bacterial cell takes up foreign DNA and incorporates this DNA into its own. With the use bacterial transformation this part of Genetic Engineering has become the most important and widely used technique, creating life saving antibiotics and medicines. E.coli is generally used in these procedures because of its ability to adapt and grow exponentially. Genetic Engineers can then use large bacterial colonies, Ampicillin, and X-gal to indicate if b-glactosidase is present along with identifying the recombinant and non-recombinant colonies. The transformed bacteria that contains ampicillin will spread and survive either turning white

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