BioTech + Art

Typical BioArt of microscopic parasites
This week’s topic is on biotechnology and art. Art expands with technology, in biotechnology, artist are also scientists that creates their art through scientific process at cellular level. It is a very interesting topic, but there is much controversy into it.

Glowing Flowers in Exhibition in Hong Kong
Natural Selection proposed by Charles Darwin has been the one theory defining our evolution for centuries. On the other hand, we have artificial selection where we human interfere and chooses the organism to breed. It was used to be done by cross-breeding and can only success if the organisms used for cross-breeding are closely-related. However, with modern technology, especially biotechnology, we can modify living things at cellular level. So we can literally extract a gene from one organism and put it into another organism. One example can be the flower that glow in the dark. This is an engineer for beauty where fluorescent protein from jelly fish is injected to the flower, giving it the ability to glow in the dark. This kind of glowing flower are often used by artists to create astonishing effect even at night.

What is this GM "Tomato" Made of?
While having its artistic aspect, genetic modification has been condemned for a variety of reasons. One of the most controversial topic in such biotechnology lies in GM food. Food has always been the key area for biotechnology. In the past, farmers artificially select the crop to grow by a range of criteria such as the productivity and pest resistivity. Nowadays, with biotechnology, genetic modified food has proven to be a lot more successful in the aspects that traditional farmers were seeking. However, it comes with debates. There are researches claiming genetically modified food leads to allergies. Also, there are people claiming the GMO companies are bullying the farmers. These are just some of the ongoing debates. So is GMO really helpful? As an individual, all my concern is what I eat and GMO is telling me that I won’t know what I eat because the food is a mixture of genes from different organisms. That is pretty scary to me at least.


There are other areas of controversies of course, for example the use of pig to grow human organs for transplantation. To all these issues, there are debates over the ethical and safety aspects. For us commoners, we don’t really get to influence the direction genetic modification go. However, we should be aware of such things. Nonetheless, genetic modification can bring much benefits, especially if the negative aspects can be prevented.


References:

Institute for Responsible Technology. "Genetically Engineered Food May Cause Rising Food Allergies(Part 1)". http://responsibletechnology.org/genetically-engineered-foods-may-cause-rising-food-allergies-part-one/ Accessed May 14 2017

Skwarecki, Beth. LifeHacker. "The Biggest Concern About GMO Food Aren't Really About GMOs".  http://vitals.lifehacker.com/the-biggest-concerns-about-gmo-food-arent-really-about-1702906290 Accessed May 14 2017

 Vesna, Victoria. Lecture. DESMA. Accessed May 14 2017

 Whitfield, John. Nature. "A Rosy Glow".
 http://www.nature.com/news/2001/011025/full/news011025-8.html Accessed May 14 2017

Wikipedia. "BioArt". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioArt Accessed May 14 2017

Wikipedia. "Natural Selection". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection Accessed May 14 2017

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 17, 2017 at 11:47 PM

    Your article is very interesting as you discussed transplanting genes from one species to another. The practice really does post lots of controversy and may cause potential danger. As you said, the biggest concern for ordinary people is whether the GM food we are consuming is safe. I hope scientists could be more prudent in making more alien food species.

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