What is Recombinant DNA Technology?
Recombinant DNA technology is a technology which allows DNA to be produced via artificial means. The procedure has been used to change DNA in living organisms and may have even more practical uses in the future. It is an area of medical science that is just beginning to be researched in a concerted effort. Recombinant DNA technology works by taking DNA from two different sources and combining that DNA into a single molecule. That alone, however, will not do much. Recombinant DNA technology only becomes useful when that artificially-created DNA is reproduced. This is known as DNA cloning. There are two main types of cloning that recombinant DNA technology is used for: therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. Most are familiar with reproductive cloning, which will produce an organism with the exact genetic information of an already-existing organism. This has already been done with some animals. Dolly, a sheep, was the first mammal to ever be reproduced as an exact genetic copy. The
