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webpages with check for understanding

Student friendly online "your world" magazines, on a variety of topics.

Comprehensive site exploring various facets of ethics.

Series of bioethical case studies

Transgenic animal lesson from Texas Education Agency 2013

video segment

Human activities currently add about nine gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere yearly. Photosynthetic organisms on land and in the ocean absorb about five of those gigatons through the natural uptake of CO2, leaving to humans the task of dealing with the rest. But no matter how much carbon there is, capturing it and preventing it from reentering the atmosphere is an immense engineering challenge; even today's best technology is orders of magnitude less effective than photosynthesis at trapping atmospheric carbon.

A team of Indian biologists has demonstrated that a key component of the water buffalo genome can be manipulated to produce foreign proteins in the buffalo's milk (J. Biotechnol. 2015, DOI:10.1016/j.jbiotec.2015.02.001). The findings suggest the possibility of modifying the genetic material of water buffalo-that is, creating transgenic buffalo-to produce protein drugs, says team member Subeer S. Majumdar, of the National Institute of Immunology, in New Delhi.

 In 2005, with the backing of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Dale began experimenting with ways to add beta-carotene, a nutrient the human body uses to produce vitamin A, to the East African Highland cooking banana, a staple in the Ugandan diet.

Every year, it inflicts between 250,000 and 500,000 helpless and malnourished young people with early-life blindness. And in half of those cases, it also brings death, according to the World Health Organization. Vitamin A deficiency also puts pregnant women at risk. It's rare in developed countries, but the goal of completely eradicating vitamin A deficiency - mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia - remains unmet. Scientists are now working to genetically engineer "super" bananas that are fortified with crucial alpha- and beta-carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A.

National Geographic site from the Future of Food series

Genetically modified foods have been demonized in recent years by health advocates and environmentalists alike. If we look at the history of food cultivation, however, it is apparent we've been eating them all along. SA editor Eric R. Olson explains.

1 miin video on transgenic animals

In this case study, we'll follow the process of developing an edible vaccine for the hepatitis B virus and explore practical details of genetic engineering techniques. 

Human-engineered microbes are workhorses of the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, churning out biofuels, drugs, and many other products. But they can cause big problems if they become contaminated by other microbes or viruses or escape into the environment. Now, a new type of microbe that can survive only on artificial nutrients promises better security against such mishaps. The strategy, described in two papers in this week's issue of Nature, might ultimately be used to control genetically engineered plants or other organisms released into the wild to create products or clean up pollution.

Ever wonder how your food would be without any human intervention over the course of agriculture history? For thousands of years, farmers have manipulated their crops to get the best yields and have resulted in many of the produce you see today.

article summarizing transgenic and recombinant organisms

In "Harvest of Fear," FRONTLINE and NOVA explore the intensifying debate over genetically-modified (gm) food crops. Interviewing scientists, farmers, biotech and food industry representatives, government regulators, and critics of biotechnology, this two-hour report presents both sides of the debate, exploring the risks and benefits, the hopes and fears, of this new technology.

Scientists at AgResearch in New Zealand have successfully produced healthy transgenic cows that make modified milk or human therapeutic proteins in their milk.