THE CONCEPT OF MANMADE evolution in itself is not innovative. Humans have been “editing” life since the advent of agriculture and breeding. Using artificial selection, we consciously make the choice to breed the variants that possess good traits, allowing us to optimize the kinds of crops we harvest and meet the needs of our ever-growing population. In a span of only thousands of years, we have drastically altered the structure of certain crops such as corn, banana and eggplant that would otherwise take centuries of chance mutations to naturally develop into the forms we are familiar with.
more than fifty years ago. Scientists have tried trial-and-error methods such as DNA irradiation, but were discouraged by its one-in-a-million chance of success, wasting a hefty amount of time and resources. But in the late 1960s, restriction enzymes in E. coli bacteria were discovered. These restriction enzymes can cut specific sites on the DNA, enabling scientists to use these enzymes like scissors. After cutting the sites on the DNA which they want to cut, the scientists can then replace these removed segments with DNA sequences from other organisms. The method is far more efficient than relying on chance.
Since their use of artificial breeding 10,000 years ago, humans have never looked back and continued to zero in on manipulating the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the code of life itself. Humans have adopted a multitude of methods focused on editing the DNA even just after it was discovered
The drawback however was that restriction enzymes can only cut over select sites on the DNA. Each site on the DNA are bound by unique proteins which fold like knots on a rope. The problem is each “knot” has a unique way of folding which requires the development of new and
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WRITTEN BY ABIGAIL ABLANG PAENG AMBAG ILLUSTRATED BY TIFFANY UY
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