3.11 Genetic Engineering

A. Career Spotlight

An engineer is a scientist who uses math and science to design and build things that solve real-world problems. Here are three examples.

What do they have in common?
How are they different?

B. Can you spot the fake?

Directions: Here are ten examples of how scientists have genetically engineered plants and animals (including people). 7 are true. 3 are false. Answer each question and see if you can figure out which 3 are false as you go.

C. Engineering a Strand of DNA: CRISPR

But how does this engineering happen? How do scientists make the tinies changes to our DNA?
Well, they literally snip out a tiny part of DNA and replace it with a new gene or new code.

Read the short article about CRISPR below.

D. Did CRISPR work?

Sometimes, when scientists are experimenting with genes, it’s hard to know if a change worked. Because sometimes the change isn’t something you can see. When this happens, scientists might do something called pairing. They pair the change they want to make that they can’t see, with a change they can see. Then they know if the change they can see worked, the change they can’t see probably worked too. To do this, they borrow genes from another species.

Directions: Check out the pictures of the four animals below. Which species did they take genes from to help them “SEE” if the CRISPR editing worked. Make a guess, then click the image to check your answer.