Designing Life: A Quiz About Genetic Engineering

Question: What type of organism was the first to be successfully modified via the techniques of genetic engineering?

Answer: In 1973 scientists Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen used a plasmid to insert a gene for antibiotic resistance from one bacterium into a different bacterium, resulting in the first genetically modified organism (GMO).

Question: Genetic engineering is the artificial manipulation, modification, and recombination of what class of naturally occurring chemical compound?

Answer: Genetic engineering is the artificial manipulation, modification, and recombination of DNA or other nucleic acid molecules—the chemical compounds that contain genetic information for the transmission of inherited traits.

Question: Which of the following tools allows researchers to make highly specific changes in an organism’s nucleic acid sequence?

Answer: Gene editing, which is performed by using enzymes that have been engineered to target a DNA sequence of just three or four base pairs in length, allows researchers to essentially customize an organism’s genetic makeup.

Question: In the modern era, the term genetic engineering refers specifically to which of the following methods?

Answer: Historically, the term genetic engineering was used to describe both artificial selection and various biomedical techniques. In the latter part of the 20th century, however, the term came to refer more specifically to methods of recombinant DNA technology (or gene cloning).

Question: Which of the following is the primary method of genetic engineering that has been studied in humans?

Answer: In gene therapy, a normal gene is introduced into an individual’s genome in order to repair a mutation that causes a genetic disease.

Question: In recombinant DNA technology, what molecule is the most commonly used DNA vector (or carrier, used to insert foreign genetic material into an organism’s genome)?

Answer: Most recombinant DNA technology involves the insertion of foreign genes into the plasmids (small rings of DNA) of common laboratory strains of bacteria.

Question: The majority of genetically modified crops are grown in which part of the world?

Answer: By 2015, more than three-quarters of the global land area planted with genetically modified crops was distributed between just three countries in the Americas: Argentina, Brazil, and the United States.

Question: The ability to recombine genetic material from different organisms, resulting in the production of a genetically modified organism, is possible for which of the following reasons?

Answer: Every living thing on Earth carries its genetic information in the form of nucleic acids, fragments of which can be artificially recombined to create modified organisms.