Biotechnology confusion: Differences among GMOs, gene editing and genetic engineering

Commonly confused Difference between GMOs gene editing and genetic engineering e

Your body contains trillions of cells which make up the physical you. Each one of these cells has a blueprint that is completely unique to you, called yourย DNA.

In order to read all that information on your DNA, we use machines that do โ€œgene sequencing.โ€ A gene is a distinct stretch of DNA that determines something about who you are. โ€œGene sequencingโ€ is where we can go through and laboriously read every single character in your DNA and then store it in a big file.

What if we couldย change genes in order to start changing your attributes? This is now possible using a technology calledย โ€œgene editing.โ€ย This is where we are able to precisely โ€œsnipโ€ sections of DNA from the strand and then replace them with our own snippets.

All these methods fall under the envelope of โ€œgenetic engineeringโ€. Consequently, gene editing is just another form of genetic engineering.

Genetic engineering is the direct manipulation of an organismโ€™s DNA using any number of methods. GMO is the genetic modification of organisms. Itโ€™s been around for a while and uses imprecise methods of genetic engineering. Gene editing is now a more precise method of genetic engineering which hopes to avoid any bad associations with GMO.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: GMO vs Gene Editing vs Genetic Engineering

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