What You Learned from This Essential

WhatYouLearnedFromThisessential

I hope that this essential will give you an insight into the current possibilities of genetic engineering. Fascination and concern, possibilities and abuse, humi- lity before the living and responsibility stay close together. This essential is not intended to provide answers, but rather to motivate you to ask questions—I have some:

• Reading the genetic material of living beings provides fascinating insights into the history of evolution, for example, of humans. It also makes it possible to determine genetic markers for diseases or, for example, cognitive traits that can be used in diagnostics. However, this knowledge is associated with a high level of responsibility when it comes for example to prenatal or preimplantation diagnostics or marketing. When does diagnostics become breeding through targeted selection? • Editing of genetic information, for example by means of CRISPR/Cas, can be used to speciﬁcally modify living organisms. The simplicity of the application offers opportunities, for example, in animal and plant breeding, and risks, for example, when using the gene drive. In addition, genome editing makes it possible to cure genetic diseases—for example, in the human embryo. Are we allowed to do that? • Writing unprecedented genetic information that is new to nature on a large scale is the subject of synthetic biology. This new branch of genetic engineering aims to revolutionize biology—and attracts laymen who wish to participate. How should the liberalization of biotechnology and genetic engineering be controlled? • The genetic material is part of a cell and the cell is part of an environment.The most recent extension of our understanding of heredity, i. e. epigenetics, calls

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2021 37 R. Wünschiers, Genetic Engineering, Springer essentials, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32403-2 38 What You Learned From This essential

into question some centuries-old knowledge—and provides a molecular basis for Lamarck’s principle of the inheritance of traits acquired during a person’s lifetime. Do we have to learn to rethink the interaction between living beings and the environment? Literature

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