Simpler description of Genetic Engineering?

Before you can understand the basics of genetic engineering, you need to have a basic understanding of genetics first. Every human, animal, and plant has inside of them genes that determine specific traits about them. For every specific trait of a person, they have two genes, one that shows and one that doesn't (unless you are homozygous, meaning that both of the genes for a certain trait are t he same).

Now, scientists have discovered how to raise humans and animals up as an embryo without going through the usual breeding. Rather, they take an ideal gene they would like to put into. the creature, and through a series of procedures, they basically make the embryo have that gene. They raise the embryo in a lab (not inside of the mother) until it matures into the animal desired. Sometimes this gene will be a disease, and they will use the animal to further study it.

Genetic manipulation is also a way where an animal (or plants) genes are directly manipulated. Genetic manipulation has been used to make plants bug resistant, to clone a sheep, etc.

Cloning

A brief overview

Cloning is also associated with Genetic Engineering. Cloning is a (complicated) process in which scientists create an exact genetic duplicate of an organism. The best way I can explain this is if you've watched jurassic park; they take some of the genes out of the mosquito to make all those dinos. Instead of taking the DNA out of a third source however, they would take something DNA directly from something they want to clone, and then use the DNA to make an exact genetic replica.

Cloning can be used in several ways. Cloning can be used on an animal or crop to produce more food, or on an organism to further study it, or perhaps in the future it will be used to continue to replicate someone so they always have at least one of themselves alive.

However, when cloning is done the organism will have no memory of its past life. So, if you wanted to clone the ultimate basketball team, you might be out of luck because they wouldn't have the skills built into their genes. They learned how to play basketball through experiences; not via genes.

For example, in the movie Jurassic Park, they use genetic manipulation and cloning to not only alter the dinosaur's gender, but also to "clone" it. The dinosaurs wouldn't technically be clones however, because their DNA structure is slightly different than the extinct dinosaurs.



Extracted from: http://www.squidoo.com/GeneticEngineering