Application of Recombinant DNA Technology and Ethical, Legal and Social Issues (ELSI)
Related to Recombinant DNA Technology

Introduction

Recombinant DNA (rDNA) or chimeric DNA are artificial DNA molecules formed by laboratory methods of genetic recombination (production of an offspring with genetic material different from each parent) to bring together genetic material from multiple sources, creating sequences otherwise not found in natural organisms.

DNA used for chimeric DNA formation can originate from literally any species, because of the universal genetic code – the DNA in all living beings has the same structure, it only differs in the sequence of nucleotides – its basic structural components or subunits.

Proteins originating from the expression of recombinant DNA within living cells are called recombinant proteins.
If recombinant DNA is introduced into a host organism, the production of recombinant protein is not obligatory.

Expression of foreign proteins requires the use of specialized expression vectors and often necessitates significant restructure by foreign coding sequence.
Recombinant DNA is artificial by definition, while genetic recombination is a natural process of combining the parental genetic material (Griffiths, Gelbart, Miller et al., 1999; Cooper, 2000).

Recombinant DNA technology makes use of palindromic sequences (DNA seqences whose complementary DNA strands are reverse, e.g. the complementary sequence of CTAG is GACT – the reverse sequence of its complementary sequence) to produce “sticky” and “blunt” ends in order to achieve the desired DNA sequence.

Even if some of the desired sequences do not exist in nature, they can be

1. Use the codon table below to answer the following three question...