Question

1. How might synthetic biology be used to correct a disease such as diabetes?

2. List a few examples of veterinary biotechnology products.

3. What is the approximate size of the instruments and products of nanotechnology?

Answer 1

1. Within diabetes, there is some early research on how synthetic biology may be used. Pastor describes research outside of the body that focuses on the engineering of non-pancreatic cells with genes to allow them to act like the pancreatic tissues upon transplantation into the body. He is also aware of research in the body that reprograms damaged pancreatic tissues with new proteins and nucelotides that are building blocks of DNA and RNA to regenerate and repair itself in a similar way to that used by certain nonhuman species like certain fish. In the year 2015, there was some news coverage of researchers at J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, California, investigating the re-engineering of the genomes of skin bacteria so they could help the bodies of people with diabetes function better. Other large universities are beginning research in to the area of synthetic biology and diabetes treatment. Pastor is hopeful that ideas under development within synthetic biology may one day help cure the burden of diabetes.

Though Dr. Gordon Weir, who is the co-head of the Section on Islet Cell and Regenerative Biology at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, would like to learn more about synthetic biology as it relates to diabetes treatment, he believes the progress over the past decade in converting stem cells into insulin-producing beta cells hold more immediate promise for Type 1 diabetes. Beta cells come from the pancreas.

2. Examples of animal biotechnology include creating transgenic animals. Here animals with one or more genes introduced by human intervention, using gene knock out technology to make animals with a specific inactivated gene and producing nearly identical animals by somatic cell nuclear transfer or cloning.

3. Nanotechnology is science, engineering, and technology conducted at the nanoscale, which is about 1 to 100 nanometers
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