 So today we're covering genetically modified organisms, but let's start a little bit earlier by covering a few terms. So biotechnology is the manipulation of organisms or their components to make useful products. Now technically by this definition, biotechnology has been taking place for hundreds and thousands of years. So it's been used to make bread by using yeast. It's been used to selectively breed livestock for desired traits. But now that it's in the 2000s, biotechnology has a completely different definition. So in this era, the use of biotechnology or DNA technology is used to study and manipulate genetic material, modify specific genes, and also move genes between organisms. So in order to do this, we have to create what's called recombinant DNA. So recombinant DNA is formed when scientists combine nucleotide sequences, or pieces of DNA, from two or more different sources to form a single DNA molecule. And this recombinant DNA technology is used widely in genetic engineering, which is the direct manipulation of genes for practical purposes. So one example of this is taking the mouse genome and inserting the green fluorescent protein, which is a protein that we get from jellyfish. And so you can end up in a manner of speaking with glow in the dark mice. And this was done in order to study which genes were being on and which genes were off in these particular mice, not just to create cool little animals for you to take home. So applications of this include making humulin to food products to making farm animals. And we'll go through each of these categories today. So by transferring the gene of a desired protein into a bacteria or yeast, proteins that are naturally present and only tiny, tiny amounts in these organisms can be made in much larger quantities and then harvested for our use. So an example of this is making humulin. So in 1982, the very first genetically engineered pharmaceutical product was sold. And this was the creation of human insulin. So human insulin was produced by genetically modified bacteria. And this was the very first recombinant DNA drug technology that was approved by the FDA. And today it's used by about two to four million Americans and also people worldwide with diabetes. So what they did is they took the gene for human insulin and they inserted it into the bacteria or inserted it into yeast. And then they grow those bacteria in those yeast in very large fermentation vats that are just simply filled with those organisms plus a growth media that makes them very happy. And then for these particular organisms, the insulin is a waste product, so they simply excrete it. So we can siphon off the fluid, siphon all those materials off, and then we can collect that and purify the insulin so that then we can use that for medicine today. And so you can see, again, you've got just these very large vats that grow it up, siphon off the fluid, provide more growth media so the bacteria in the yeast can keep growing and making that insulin for us. In addition to that, DNA technology can be used to produce medically valuable molecules including human growth hormone or HGH, the hormone EPO or rethropoietin, and also be used to make vaccines. So human growth hormone can be given to individuals who have a naturally short stature and so that can help them grow to the appropriate height. The human hormone EPO can stimulate the production of red blood cells. So if somebody has anemia and isn't able to make enough of these red blood cells, we can give them this drug product that's produced from those other organisms, those genetically modified organisms, and treat the anemia. Now the hormone EPO has also been known to be given to athletes to give them a little bit of a boost when they're doing very highly competitive activities where they need a little bit more oxygen to give them a competitive edge. But again it can be used for a lot of medical treatments as well. It can also be used to make vaccines. So vaccines are harmless variants or derivatives of a pathogen used to prevent infectious diseases. So again we can go in, we can look at for example a virus genome, take out all of the genes that would cause us harm, and then we can give a dummy version of the virus genome into our system and we can create immunity to it. And so then we'd be able to be protected in the event that we actually saw the real virus in nature. So all of these things can use the genetic modification of these organisms to provide something very useful for us. So let's move on to food. So genetically modified foods or GM foods are quickly replacing some traditional plant breeding programs. So normally in order to create the perfect plant, so maybe a drought resistant, pest resistant things like that, you'd have to take plant A and plant B, breed them together, and then wait for them to grow up through their entire growing season. But now we can take all of our desired genes, splice them together to create a genetically modified organism, and within less than a year we can start creating a lot of these different plants for our use. So a genetically modified organism means that it has one or more genes that are acquired by artificial means. So some of these genes could be absolutely natural, absolutely normal genes from the same kind of plant, or these genes could be completely synthetic, something that we made up new in the lab. And then these transgenic organisms again are containing one gene from another organism, typically from another species. So in the U.S., actually about 50% of our corn crops and about 75% of our soybean and cotton crops are genetically modified. And one reason for this is that our corn plants were modified to be more resistant to an insect infestation from the European corn borer. But the corn is perfectly safe as far as we know, and we're able to consume it, use it in our daily life, no problems. Another example of a genetically modified food is golden rice. So around the world, about 250 million children worldwide are vitamin A deficient. And so an organization was able to create rice that was able to produce more beta carotene, which is something that our bodies can then convert to vitamin A. And so they were able to change regular rice, which is very low in vitamin A, to something that was very rich in that beta carotene that we can then convert to vitamin A. And so the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and many others have started offering this golden rice to many different countries around the world where they have this vitamin A deficiency. But the challenge is, is finding a government or a group of people willing to eat the golden rice. So unfortunately right now, even though this spectacular food product is available, you can be just grown the same way as the regular rice products would be grown, people are afraid of this because they don't know, is something bad going to happen to me unfortunately. Now another example of a genetically modified organism is one that we'd call a farm animal or pharmacy animal. So in 2009, the FDA approved the first drug produced by Livestock that was engineered again to carry a human gene. And so you can see these goats right here. These guys are able to make a product that's called antithrombin. So normally in order to get a lot of antithrombin, we have to isolate it from human blood donations. But this one little goat here in one year just collecting its milk can produce as much antithrombin as 90,000 human blood donations. So this little guy right here is going to be very useful in making that product for us. DNA technology may eventually one day replace some traditional animal breeding, but again it's not currently used to produce transgenic animal sold as food. So again, even the United States is a little bit afraid of some of these genetically modified organisms and so we're studying them right now to see are they safe, do they have the exact same nutritional qualities and things like that. We can also produce some meat products so we can create animals that have larger muscles. And we can also create animals that are a little bit healthier to eat. So you can see these little pigs right here. You can genetically modify them to start making omega-3 fatty acids. This is a fatty acid that we can't make ourselves, but we can now have these pigs that are enriched with that and that actually can protect us from heart disease and other things.