A relatively new and controversial science has been causing waves in today’s society. This science is called genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is the manipulation of a gene or strain of DNA by using bioengineering. Animals or bacteria that undergo genetic engineering are called genetically modified organisms. Recently, genetic engineering has been expanded to humans. More specifically in...

Fusarium head blight (FHB) significantly reduces grain yield and quality. Identification of genes that govern FHB resistance/susceptibility will facilitate biotechnology-assisted development of superior wheat varieties with FHB resistance. Our study on global expression profiling using microarray and real-time PCR identified three genes that are significantly highly expressed (up-regulated) in ...

According to the St. Louis POST-DISPATCH, Monsanto, the St. Louis chemical and biotechnology giant, last month announced it had recalled "small quantities" of a genetically engineered canola seed containing an unapproved gene that had gotten into the product by mistake. Canola is a crop grown for livestock feed, and for oil consumed by humans. The canola-recall story, only 84 words long, was bu...

1 Corresponding author Recent advances in molecular biology techniques, analytical methods and mathematical tools have led to a growing interest in using metabolic engineering to redirect metabolic fluxes for industrial and medical purposes. Metabolic engineering is referred to as the directed improvement of cellular properties through the modification of specific biochemical reactions or the i...

Contents 1. Introduction 2. Transformation of dicotyledonous plants 2.1 Transformation using Agrobacterium tumefaciens 2.1.1 The role of A. tumefaciens chromosomally encoded proteins and the Vir proteins 2.2 Other transformation methods 3. Transformation of monocotyledonous plants 3.1 Biolistic transformation 3.1.1 Gene silencing 3.2 Agrobacterium transformation 4. Transformation of algae 5. Pr...

Genetically modified crops and foodstuff have been highly controversial for environmental, health, and ethical reasons. The controversies have been world-wide, but most prominent in the European Union, for reasons that include distrust of the regulatory authorities, scientists and technocratic decision making. An informal moratorium in the EU came recently to an end, without solving the underly...

Definition: Genetic engineering, recombinant DNA technology and biotechnology – the buzz words you may have heard often on radio or TV, or read about in featured articles in newspapers or popular magazines. It is a set of techniques that are used to achieve one or more of three goals: to reveal the complex processes of how genes are inherited and expressed, to provide better understanding and e...