Genetic modification involves genetic engineering, also known as gene splicing, a technique to splice together DNA fragments from more than one organism and thus preparing a “recombinant” DNA molecule in a test tube, producing a single piece of genetic material containing the original information from multiple fragments which can then be inserted into another organism.
This is achieved by cutting up DNA molecules with restriction enzymes and splicing these fragments together using DNA ligase. A transgenic organism that contains such DNA sequences from a foreign organism integrated into its own genome, the term “transgenic” literally means across gene. A mouse or fish engineered to express the green fluorescence protein, for example, would be considered a transgenic organism, since the gene coding for the protein originated from a species of jellyfish.
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