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History of Technology 3: Genetically Modifying Plants and Animals 5 Views
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Description:
Genetically modifying plants and animals has given us many things, perhaps the most important being glowing fish. We wish we were kidding.
Transcript
- 00:03
Agriculture, when we think of agriculture we don't always think of
- 00:06
super high-tech sciency stuff. we tend to think of old-fashioned tractors and [scientist in a lab]
- 00:11
men wearing overalls maybe some happy cows mooing in the distance . happy
- 00:16
little tree here oh wait that's a Bob Ross. all right well anyway as it turns
- 00:21
out agriculture is actually using some of the most cutting-edge science in town.
Full Transcript
- 00:25
we're talking about the power to mix and match DNA .seriously like making corn
- 00:31
that poisoned bugs. tomatoes that don't rot. in sakko plants that glow. also needs
- 00:37
to wait for evolution when we can jump-started ourselves. what could
- 00:41
possibly go wrong? well the jury is turning out on that one.
- 00:46
genetically modifying plants and animals is definitely a new technology humans
- 00:50
didn't even have the ability to mix and match DNA into the late 1970s. and way
- 00:55
back then people mistakenly thought DNA meant disco now and always. truth is we
- 01:01
didn't even know what DNA was until recently, but even though it didn't [two men with a disco ball]
- 01:05
happen in a petri dish humans have been manipulating genes for a long time. we
- 01:10
could even say that the beginning of Agriculture was an example of humans
- 01:13
artificially selecting which genetic traits they liked best, but the very
- 01:19
least humans were giving evolution and assist. in the early 20th century we got
- 01:24
even more serious about using evolution to our advantage.
- 01:27
scientists in the US Japan and Mexico all started crossbreeding plants in labs [people look skeptical]
- 01:32
to make them produce more food and resist certain diseases. they were all
- 01:36
trying to make high yielding varieties or hy Vees of different grains mostly
- 01:42
wheat and rice to you know feed the world. by the 1960's hy Vees were grown
- 01:47
successfully all over the place grain production skyrocketed in the Green
- 01:51
Revolution kicked into high gear. you might be thinking to yourself well that
- 01:55
sounds like a good place to stop. but when has humanity ever said that? well in
- 02:01
1972 two biochemist named Boyer and Cohen managed to invent recombinant DNA
- 02:08
or r- DNA. r- DNA molecules are artificially made little [terms defined]
- 02:13
pieces of DNA that scientists use to do a little genetic remixing. so basically Moyer and Cohen
- 02:20
figured out how we could use DNA DJ's we can now take DNA from one animal plant
- 02:25
or bacteria and stick them in the middle of some other type bugs animal or plant
- 02:31
DNA. yeah well dogs with elephant parts? no probs
- 02:35
okay it's a little more complicated than cutting and pasting but that's the
- 02:38
general idea. one of the very first things scientists made was artificial
- 02:42
insulin which is the stuff that helps treat diabetes. we used to take it from
- 02:47
pigs and cows just come on what if they need it for right? they were just hogging
- 02:53
it. well anyway r- DNA was also used to make the hepatitis
- 02:58
B vaccine and a human blood clotting factor. oh and also glowing fish here's
- 03:05
what fish the glow under a blacklight just goes to show that some scientists
- 03:09
really aren't taking this very seriously.
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