The field of transgenics has had a long history which has brought us to the point where we have developed many beneficial uses for it, and yet people still argue over ethics and uses of transgenic organisms. Transgenics involves altering an animal but is much different from traditional methods; transgenics is a relatively new field by comparison. Traditional methods have been used since early man, when the first dogs were tamed. Man kept dogs that were friendly and helped protect them. Over time, we have made dogs completely tame through this selective breeding. This has occurred with not only animals but from the beginning of agriculture, we have cultivated better and better crops. This all takes a long time to show benefits and results while altering organisms can be done much faster.
What exactly is transgenics? Trangenics refers to the splicing of a DNA sequence from one organism into another, this is also known as Recombinant DNA (Futureworld).
People promenading near the Palace Hotel at Watson...
English: recombinant DNA
Paul Berg - 1980 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Resea...By 1943, DNA was proved to be the genetic molecule capable of altering the heredity of bacteria (Watson, 5). In 1947, the first sexually crossed mutant bacteria was produced by Edward Tatum and Joshua Landenberg (Watson, 5). When altering an organism transgenics can make it exhibit traits from a third parent, or in the case of a bacteria a second parent (Campbell, 397). This allows scientists to add a foreign quality to an organism and they have been doing this for a while. The first recombinant DNA molecule was created at Stanford University in 1972 (Watson, 5). These were both strides to further progress in the production of chimeras. A chimera is an organism with some foreign DNA (Watson, 155). The Chimera is a creature from Greek mythology and is a sister of the Sphinx. It is part lion, part goat, and...