Week 6: Biotech + Art

Every invention starts with an idea that someone thought of and then art is drawn and an experiment is applied to make these ideas come to reality and so are biotechnologies. These technologies help us in our everyday lives and also bring us closer to realizing that the body and brain are capable of doing much more than we ever could imagine.  Biotechnologies benefit the environment in many ways.  They provides tools and technologies that provide solutions to many of today’s global environmental challenges.

                                   

Figure 1: Biotechnology used in agriculture 

The field that biotechnology has had most success, is agriculture because it introduces the breeding techniques, which alter living organisms, or parts of organisms, to modify products; improve plants or animals; or develop microorganisms for specific agricultural uses and this process is possible due to the understanding of genetic engineering. Genetic engineering, is use to operate the plant's genes through techniques of modern molecular biology often referred to as recombinant DNA technology.Based on this understanding, it has helped scientists developed solutions to increase agricultural productivity. This has helped create fruits like the seedless grape, tomatoes and corn that has been genetically modify to tolerate herbicides and kill insects that try to eat it. these are very important to human because it gives us a wide varieties of options when it comes to food and also allow farmers to worry about other aspect of agriculture that doesn't have to do with herbicides because of the genetically modified crops that has been made it help kill them. 

Figure 2:   Some Genetically Modified foods  we eat everyday.

When it comes to agriculture, organic and non organic farmers are the main growers. Non-organic growers use a product such as giberellic acid to treat fruits like grapes to ensure that no seeds at all will be found in them. Organic growers don't use any chemicals to grow their crops. They use the traditional growing method to make sure it all natural. This shows important the brain can go to an extent to help solve problems that seems unthinkable. In lecture this week, i learned of the work of Eduardo Kac who created a transgenic bunny named Alba.  Through many experiments, Eduardo was able to transfer a gene from a jellyfish into Alba that makes her glow green when illuminated with the correct light. This form of art by Eduardo shows the how genetic engineering can help us unfold many mysteries that has happened or explain why things are the way they are.

Figure 3: Genetic engineering (DNA formation of a plant leave) 

To answer Ruth West's last question, i think with the existence of human and art there is always going to be practice of human creativity but I think human activities should be limited because with the way the earth is going, in decades to come the world is not going to be a safe place with the practices like economic growth, technology, and consumption because they are destabilizing the global environment.  even though biotechnologies are beneficially in this modern world its also is can be harmful because these experiments done by scientists is a manipulation to plants and animals and also the natural order of thing. With these practices i fell that might be an  increase risk of biological warfare which will be a problem to our environment if limits are not put on human creativity when it it come to biotech.

This picture is a symbolizes of how even the smallest human activities can come back and hurt us later if in the future if we are not careful. the smallest things are the most dangerous so limiting human creativity should be taken into consideration to help us avoid problems in the future. 

   Figure 4: A picture representing biological warfare. 

Citation

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