Biology SAC. Need some help urgently!!?

Question

I did a prac the other day on something to do with bacterial transformation.

I'm slightly behind with this unit of year 12 biology and was wondering if anyone could explain what the following questions mean....

- Outline how the process of bacterial transformatin is useful in the production of drugs or pharmaceuticals.

- Do you have any evidence that your technique was 'sterile'?

- Why is expressing a particular gene under particular conditions important for bacterial success?

- What purpose does the control serve?

I'm not cheating on this, we were given the questions to research and I am struggling to find answers so help would be AMAZING!

Answer 1

I'm a little rusty on my Biology know-how, so please excuse me if some of my answers seems a little vague.

1) Basically, bacterial transformation is the insertion of a foreign strand of DNA into bacteria such that foreign expression of the gene, creating new proteins will occur. This is useful in pharmaceuticals because it rapidly synthesizes compounds that would otherwise take up too much time or resources to artificially manufacture. For instance, we use bacteria to synthesize insulin, a hormone not normally produced by bacteria. We can then use the created insulin for treating those with diabetes, and such.

2) The only answer I can come with for this is that living organisms are creating and synthesizing the compounds, not machines and artificial processes with the possibility for contamination.

3) Expressing a certain gene at a particular time is important for bacterial success because such a process usually results in creation of a protein or substance that functions to maintain homeostasis for the bacteria at a particular time in  a particular environment.

4) A control serves as a point of comparison in any scientific experiment, untreated by an independent variable such that all your following experimental subjects can be compared to it and observe what changes have occurred.

Hope that helps. Good luck on your class!