Genetic engineering
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Genetic engineering, genetic modification (GM), and the now-deprecated gene splicing are terms for the process of manipulating genes in an organism, usually outside the organism's normal reproductive process.
It often involves the isolation, manipulation and reintroduction of DNA into model organisms, usually to express a protein. The aim is to introduce new characteristics to an organism in order to increase its usefulness, such as increasing the yield of a crop species, introducing a novel characteristic, or producing a new protein or enzyme. Examples are the production of human insulin through the use of modified bacteria and the production of new types of experimental mice such as the OncoMouse (cancer mouse) for research, through genetic redesign.
Since a protein is specified by a segment of DNA called a gene, future versions of that protein can be modified by changing the gene's underlying DNA. One way to do this is to isolate the piece of DNA containing the gene, precisely cut the gene out, and then reintroduce (splice) the gene into a different DNA segment. Daniel Nathans and Hamilton Smith received the 1978 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their isolation of restriction endonucleases, which are able to cut DNA at specific sites. Together with ligase, which can join fragments of DNA together, restriction enzymes formed the initial basis of recombinant DNA technology.
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