Evaluate the benefits of using genetic technologies

Evaluate the benefits of using genetic technologies in agricultural, medical and industrial applications (ACSBL086)

Benefits of using genetic technologies in agriculture:

Higher yield of crops obtained
Crops are disease resistant and can survive in harsh conditions
Increases variety within species by different techniques such as mutation breeding, cross breeding, somatic hybridization etc.
Some varieties of crop have been produced that could directly fix atmospheric nitrogen decreasing the plants dependency on external fertilizers

Benefits of using genetic technologies in medicine:

Genetic technologies have enabled the production of vaccines which are currently being used to prevent various infectious diseases.
Microorganisms and plant-based substances are now being manipulated to produce large number of useful drugs, enzymes and hormones at low costs. The most prominent example is the production of vast amount of Insulin, a hormone that plays role in balancing sugar level in blood.
Genetic technologies are now being applied to produce human growth hormones, follicle stimulating hormones (for treating infertility), human albumin, monoclonal antibodies, antihemophilic factors etc.
Gene therapy, a process in which defective genes are replaced to treat genetic disorders are currently one of the major sectors of research in medicine. Clinical research using somatic gene therapy has been conducted with several diseases, including X-linked SCID, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and Parkinson’s disease. In 2012, Alipogene tiparvovec became the first gene therapy treatment to be approved for clinical use. In 2015 a virus was used to insert a healthy gene into the skin cells of a boy suffering from a rare skin disease, epidermolysis bullosa, in order to grow, and then graft healthy skin onto 80 percent of the boy’s body which was affected by the illness. If successful, a wide range of diseases can be cured with gene therapy.

Benefits of using genetic technologies in industries:

Some enzymes and proteins are required to carry out fermentations in large scale in industries. Genes for such enzymes and proteins can be introduced in an organism using genetic technologies and can be multiplied in larger number in a bioreactor to produce the moderate amount of that substance for industrial fermentations.
These techniques are used to produce medicines such as insulin, human growth hormone, and vaccines, supplements such as tryptophan, aid in the production of food (chymosin in cheese making) and fuels.
Other applications with genetically engineered bacteria could involve making them perform tasks outside their natural cycle, such as making biofuels, cleaning up oil spills, carbon and other toxic waste and detecting arsenic in drinking water.
Certain genetically modified microbes can also be used in biomining and bioremediation, due to their ability to extract heavy metals from their environment and incorporate them into compounds that are more easily recoverable.

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Evaluate the benefits of using genetic technologies in agricultural, medical and industrial applications (ACSBL086)

Benefits of using genetic technologies in agriculture:

Higher yield of crops obtained
Crops are disease resistant and can survive in harsh conditions
Increases variety within species by different techniques such as mutation breeding, cross breeding, somatic hybridization etc.
Some varieties of crop have been produced that could directly fix atmospheric nitrogen decreasing the plants dependency on external fertilizers

Benefits of using genetic technologies in medicine:

Genetic technologies have enabled the production of vaccines which are currently being used to prevent various infectious diseases.
Microorganisms and plant-based substances are now being manipulated to produce large number of useful drugs, enzymes and hormones at low costs. The most prominent example is the production of vast amount of Insulin, a hormone that plays role in balancing sugar level in blood.
Genetic technologies are now being applied to produce human growth hormones, follicle stimulating hormones (for treating infertility), human albumin, monoclonal antibodies, antihemophilic factors etc.
Gene therapy, a process in which defective genes are replaced to treat genetic disorders are currently one of the major sectors of research in medicine. Clinical research using somatic gene therapy has been conducted with several diseases, including X-linked SCID, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and Parkinson's disease. In 2012, Alipogene tiparvovec became the first gene therapy treatment to be approved for clinical use. In 2015 a virus was used to insert a healthy gene into the skin cells of a boy suffering from a rare skin disease, epidermolysis bullosa, in order to grow, and then graft healthy skin onto 80 percent of the boy's body which was affected by the illness. If successful, a wide range of diseases can be cured with gene therapy.

Benefits of using genetic technologies in industries:

Some enzymes and proteins are required to carry out fermentations in large scale in industries. Genes for such enzymes and proteins can be introduced in an organism using genetic technologies and can be multiplied in larger number in a bioreactor to produce the moderate amount of that substance for industrial fermentations.
These techniques are used to produce medicines such as insulin, human growth hormone, and vaccines, supplements such as tryptophan, aid in the production of food (chymosin in cheese making) and fuels.
Other applications with genetically engineered bacteria could involve making them perform tasks outside their natural cycle, such as making biofuels, cleaning up oil spills, carbon and other toxic waste and detecting arsenic in drinking water.
Certain genetically modified microbes can also be used in biomining and bioremediation, due to their ability to extract heavy metals from their environment and incorporate them into compounds that are more easily recoverable.