discovery diaries

Lauren and Brianna introduce themselves and talk about their educational background. They both plan to become kindergarten or first-grade teachers. They discuss their experiences in college and their plans for further education. They then transition to talking about recombinant DNA technology. They admit that they had little knowledge about it before doing research. They talk about the role of recombinant DNA technology in improving food efficiency, health problems, and environmental issues. They also discuss the advances made in vaccines and gene therapy due to recombinant DNA technology. They mention the production of biopharmaceuticals and the potential risks involved in gene therapy. They briefly mention the Jesse Gelsinger case, a tragic incident in gene therapy research. Hey everybody, it's Lauren and Brianna with the Discovery Diaries podcast. Today we're going to be talking about all things recombinant DNA technology. But before we get started, we want to take a few minutes and just introduce ourselves and tell y'all a little bit about who we are. So I'll go first. I am currently an early childhood education major. I'm graduating actually on Friday with my associates and I am so excited. I cannot wait. I hopefully am going to teach kindergarten one day. That's like my dream. I plan to go to Liberty University online to finish my bachelor's after the summer. So yeah, I'm currently working with kids with dyslexia and I tutor them three times a week and just help them to be able to spell their words and not get their letters mixed up as much. So I really enjoy that and that's been a great way to kind of get my foot in the door as a teacher. I also have been a teacher assistant in kindergarten this year. So it's been super cool to be able to work one-on-one with the kids and I just really love it. So that was just a little bit about me. Now I'm going to hand it over to Brianna and she's going to tell us a little bit about herself. Hi y'all. My name is Brianna. I'm actually pursuing my associate in arts at the moment. I don't have a specific declared major considering I started this degree whenever I was in high school. I went to an early college which allowed me to obtain my associate's degree while being in high school at the same time. So I actually didn't finish, so this is me finishing up right now. I actually graduate on Friday as well. Oh my goodness. Yes. That's so exciting. Very exciting. I've been working on this degree forever. I started high school in like 2017. It's 2024. I had a few upsets and I went through a lot, but I brought myself out of that and I pushed through and I'm now graduating and I'm just glad it's over. I'm so happy for you. Thank you. Because I really thought I'd have to transfer out or just abandon the degree entirely, but I didn't have to. That's good. The power that be was on my side, but once I graduate, I want to go to maybe Western Glover University. I was thinking about it. It's an online institution. It's also competency-based education. It's not the same as regular school. I'll be able to finish it within my own time. It's flexible. My degree would be special education and elementary education. It's a dual licensure degree. I also want to be a kindergarten or a first grade teacher, so I'm very jealous at the fact that you could be an assistant in a classroom. I am very jealous. It's so cool that we both are going for the same thing. We didn't know that before we actually started doing this podcast, so that's super cool that we both have the same interest in stuff. Really cool, indeed. Yeah, and I will say, I feel like it's taken me a while to get my associates because I was at Campbell University my freshman year of college, and I just got super homesick and didn't like being away from my family, so I came back here and went to Wayne. I feel like it's kind of just taken a while, but here we are. We're finally getting our associates. I'm proud of us. Indeed. Actually, now that you said that, I actually was at North Carolina Central University my first year of college, but I was online. They actually ran out of space on the campus, and then they were housing some students in hotels, but I wasn't able to get a spot, and I was at home, and I didn't really like it. I wasn't really learning the best way that I could, and it just didn't benefit me, so I decided to leave the school and come back to little old Wayne Community. And here we are. Here we are. We're so close to being finished. I think this is, I don't know for you, but this is like my last assignment that I have due. Me too. Yep. This is it. I'm finished. I'm so excited. I am too. It's been a ride. I'm glad it's coming to a close. Yes, me too. Well, I guess now that we've kind of introduced ourselves, we can go ahead and start talking about recombinant DNA technology. So, I don't know, but for me, I didn't really have any idea of what this was before we were assigned the project. Did you have any idea of what it was? I actually have never heard of it before, but I assumed that it had something to do with genetics, hence the name. It has DNA in the name, but I was thinking that it was more so like maybe similar to GMOs, which are genetically modified organisms, because they kind of follow the same path, like they're altered and then made into something else. For example, corn. Way back when, we couldn't really eat corn, for the simple fact. We already can't digest it, but it didn't look like corn on the cob that we have today. It was little green, like peas. Really? Yeah. I did not know that. Yeah, they were like little green peas, and they looked weird. Wow. So, scientists did GMO, and now they look like yellow corn cobs. Wow. I didn't know that. That's so interesting. Yeah, so I thought it could maybe be a little similar to that. Yeah. I know that it also has something to do with insulin as well, and I know that the recombinant DNA technology has some advances with insulin as well as a part of its biopharmaceutical advances. Yeah, that's super cool. I think both of us had done research prior to doing this, and I think we both came up with kind of like the same research about the pharmaceuticals and all of that, and we can get into that later, but that's super cool. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah, I had really no idea. I kind of thought the same thing you did about the genetics and stuff, because I know it has to do with DNA, but other than that, I really had no clue. So, after doing some research, I was like really surprised at all that I had learned from our research. Me as well. So, I guess we'll go ahead and get started. I'm just going to talk about the role of recombinant DNA technology and how it plays a part in improving our everyday life. There are three things that greatly affect human life, and that is the efficiency of food, health problems, and environmental issues. With the increasing population of the world growing every day, the human requirements for food are greatly increasing. Humans need safe food at a reasonable price. There are several human-related health issues across the world that cause a large number of deaths, despite extensive efforts being made. The current world's food production is much lower than human requirements, and health facilities are even below standard in a third world country. Rapid increase in industrialization has stored up the environmental pollution, and industrial wastes are directly allowed to mix with water, which has affected aquatic, marine, and indirectly human beings. Therefore, these issues urge to be addressed through modern technologies. Recombinant DNA technology is playing a vital role in improving health conditions by developing new vaccines and pharmaceuticals. I'm also just going to talk about some advances that were made by the recombinant DNA technology and all that has been accomplished because of it. There has just been a lot of progression in our vaccines, such as going along with health and diseases. Recombinant DNA technology has a wide spectrum of applications in treating diseases and improving health conditions. Something else is gene therapy, and I think, Brianna, you have a story to tell us a little bit later that has something to do with gene therapy, and that is an advanced technique with therapeutic potential and health services. The first successful report in the field of gene therapy was to treat a genetic disease, and it provided a secure direction toward curing the deadliest genetic diseases. A little bit more is plant systems have recently used for the expression and development of different antibodies, and most importantly, out of the many antibodies, there have been satisfactory stages of requirements in the derivatives that have to do with the DNA technology. Some more is just about the vaccines and the different drug metabolisms that DNA or the recombinant DNA technology has played a vital role in. So now I think, Brianna, you're going to talk to us a little bit about the research that you found. Yes, I'm going to discuss what recombinant DNA technology is while also speaking on the impact and contributions it has given to society. Recombinant DNA technology is modifying and isolating desired DNA segments while utilizing enzymes in different lab procedures. This technique can be applied to construct genes with new functions or to join DNA from different species. This technology has been made to, Lord, help me. This technology has made two significant contributions to the field of medicine. The synthesis of biopharmaceuticals or pharmaceutically significant proteins and gene therapy, which replaces damaged genes. It has been successfully utilized to induce the production of several human proteins and microbes, including growth hormones and insulin, which are used to treat illnesses. These are biomacromolecules, mainly in ingenious proteins as opposed to chemically synthesized pharmaceuticals. As such, there are a number of unique considerations and questions regarding whether the molecules created by our DNA technology is biologically equal to the naturally occurring ones. Gene therapy uses recombinant DNA technology to replace a damaged gene with a normal one in an effort to treat, cure, or prevent disease. With only approximately 400 trials involving roughly 3,000 patients, the majority of human clinical trials involving gene therapy are still in the research stage and intended to cure single gene diseases, malignancies, in AIDS, although scientists concur that this is the most effective use of our DNA technology. They have been hesitant in applying it because of the risk involved as demonstrated by the Jesse Gelsinger case. Now, the Jesse Gelsinger case. 17-year-old Jesse had a genetic disease called orthein transcarcinoma, OTC. It's a very long word. Yeah. It's the OTC deficiency. The OTC deficiency prevents the body from breaking down ammonia, a metabolic waste product. In patients with this disease, the excess buildup of ammonia often causes death soon after birth unless the patient's diet is immediately adjusted and monitored throughout their entire life. Jesse lived on a strict non-protein diet and controlled his OTC fairly well throughout his life. He volunteered for a gene therapy experiment designed to test possible treatments. He thought volunteering could help newborns afflicted with OTC. He enrolled as a subject in which a vector carrying a normal OTC gene was infected into his liver. Now, the vector being used to deliver the gene was called adenovirus, which is a modified version of the virus that causes the common cold. Jesse was informed that previous subjects had received adenovirus without serious complications, but unfortunately for him, he had a negative reaction to this injection and he died four days later. Wow. Yeah. That is definitely a very sad story, but at least he was trying to help research. Yeah. He put himself out there and he wanted to help other people, you know, other newborns like him who were affected. And I'm sure he knew, like, the risks in doing that. So, the fact that he knew the risk and just put himself on the line like that as a 17-year-old, it's a very inspiring story. It really is. And it's so cool that that has to do with, like, the recombinant DNA technology and everything. Yeah. I think that was, like, all of our research that we had. Yeah. But we did want to leave you all with two jokes that are very corny, but we are very proud of our jokes. Yeah. I love them. They're great. I want to go ahead and share hers because hers is very good. Okay. Okay. Okay. Here we go. The best way to understand genetics in cold weather is to, everybody, here it comes, put your coat on. Okay. That is a good one. I don't know. I like it. It's funny. It is funny. The one that I have, I just literally lost my joke. Oh, okay. Here it is. Since recombinant DNA technology has to do with the enzymes and how, you know, various laboratory techniques are used to manipulate and isolate DNA segments of interest, I'm just going to share this little joke. And that's DJ Enzyme. DJ Enzyme, he always breaks it down. Oh, my goodness, our sound effects. DJ Enzyme is hilarious. I don't care. Who came up with that? I don't know. Someone really had to have a lot of free time to come up with that. That's what I'm saying. Like, these jokes are corny, but who is really sitting down and putting these together? I need to know. They have a lot of time on their hands. You do. I guess they need to be taking their biology class or something. They have to be. You got a few classics in there, I will say. Yeah. But we hope y'all have taken away something about recombinant DNA technology and enjoyed listening to our podcast. And we can't wait to hear from the rest of y'all. All right. Well, we are signing off. This is the Discovery Diaries. Bye, y'all. Bye.