Talk:Genetic Engineering Terminology/@comment-4518252-20120328103356

Remember, none of this genetic engineering technology would be possible if it weren't for the universality of the genetic code! All living organisms on earth use the same four nucleotide bases (GCAT), and RNAs transcribed from any DNA are decoded (translated by ribosomes) in a similar fashion. Therefore, a gene from one organism can often be made just as it might be normally in another species, for instance, insulin made in bacteria! No gene splicing, GMOs or cures of genetic diseases (like the rare eye disease, LCA, that kills off photoreceptors, now cured in patients through gene therapy as discussed in class, using a viral vector carrying the normal RPE65 gene) would be possible if this were not the case! (Some gene products from higher organisms, it must be noted, do require further processing and modification, like addition of sugar groups, so wouldn't be produced exactly as they should be in a bacterial cell. In that case, however, higher organism tissue cultures can be used as producer cells so the correctly processed gene product is finally made!)