What is genetic engineering?  Genetic engineering is a method to enhance organisms, combine organisms, to clone a species or to cure disease. It can be done in a lab or simply in your back yard. It is all around us, a lot of the food you eat is modified genetically to survive shipping or to grow faster. Ever heard of a golden boxer? This is a dog with a Golden Retriever and Boxer mix. The way this was done is through breeding. Cloning is not for everyone only professionals and it has to be done in a lab in a controlled environment.     

            For years, farmers and gardeners without any knowledge of genetics have used this force breeding to bring out plants traits that are helpful for humans. They then save the seeds from the plants they like best, in effort of passing along those qualities to future years. The people working these unnatural plant crosses 10,000 years ago were the original genetic engineers. Their plant hybrids were the earliest practice of unnatural agriculture.  Years later after this simple way of hybrids an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel was experimenting with pea plants. He cross-pollinated plants with different colored flowers and differently shaped peas to see what offspring would look like.  By controlling it and keeping careful records, Mendel took hybridization a step further. When his work finally was noticed in 1900, plant breeders everywhere could cross pollinate with more accuracy. Their work has brought us such plants such as sweetheart and bridal white roses, beefsteak and roma tomatoes.

Humans have had a population of dogs since pre-historic times. They fed useful dogs, while killing wild dogs, making the relationships between humans and domesticate dogs strong over thousands of years. Later, certain domesticated dogs were trained in different groups, such as livestock guardian dogs, hunting dogs, and sight hounds. Over years, hundreds of dog breeds were developed and they continue to grow. Private dog breeding has slowed down over the years because the expense of breeding. Pure bred dogs used to be the reward of being wealthy nowadays; many people can afford to buy a dog.  Some breeders chose to breed purebred dogs, while some prefer to produce crossbred mix breed dogs. An example of a cross breed is a Labrador Retriever with a Poodle making a Labradoodle. An example of pure bred is a lab with a lab.

“Cloning is the creation of an organism that is an exact genetic copy of the other”. This means that every single bit of DNA is the same between the two.  There are human clones among us right now. They weren’t made in a lab though, but they are the same identically. This is called identical twins; these “copies” were created naturally. But the main focus today is not natural twins but genetically copied twins. We have made strides in copies such as cats and lambs. These multi-celled creatures were our second phase into clones. We started out by cloning single celled organisms such as cells. This was done in the 1950’s; today we are cloning multi-celled creatures such as lambs, mice, cats, and dogs. People that have a lot of money can afford to clone their favorite dog or cat for a very high price. This procedure might not work though and the people are not satisfied most of the time because the animal does not act like it or look like it. You may have first heard of cloning when Dolly the Sheep showed up the world in 1997. She was one of the first successful procedures in cloning. These technologies have been around for much longer than Dolly, though. How does one go about making an exact genetic copy of an organism? There are a couple of ways to do this artificial embryo twinning and somatic cell nuclear transfer.  These are two of the most renowned methods of cloning. They are also not understandable for any normal human that is not a genetic scientist. Cloning knowledge is increasing every day and soon genetically cloned humans could be among us.

            Genetics is a very debatable; some say it is unethical some say it is the most amazing scientific thing ever discovered. Soon the pro and cons of genetics will stop it or put it in drive.