Describe how gene therapy can be a social issue and give rise to moral, ethical and legal debates. Justify your response in two or more complete sentences in the essay box below.

Gene therapy is the process or replacing mutated genes with normal genes in an attempt to heal diseases by correcting the functional code of the gene. Mutated genes can cause genetic disorders. Transformation and transfection are the two methods used to insert a normal gene into an organism. The process of transformation occurs in a laboratory. Cells are grown in the lab and then introduced to DNA that carries the gene of interest. Transfection uses a virus to introduce the gene of interest to the host cells.

Gene therapy is a relatively new biotechnology. It is very expensive and much more research needs to be done before it is perfected. Gene therapy has had the best results in the treatment of cancer. One of the ways gene therapy is used in cancer treatment is by inserting a gene that is more sensitive to treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation.tion:

1. amino acid refers to the fundamental building block of proteins, comprising of an amino group and a carboxyl group.

2. catalyst refers to any substance, which increases the rate of chemical reaction without being used up in the reaction.

3. a complex molecule containing he genetic code is dna or deoxyribonucleic acid.

4. an enzyme refers to a molecule of protein, which is unique in accelerating up a particular chemical reaction in the biological systems.

5. nucleic acid refers to an sequence of sugars, phosphates, and nitrogenous bases, for example, dna and rna.

6. a protein refers to a large, composite organic molecule comprising of a huge number of amino acids associated together with the of peptide bonds.

7. rna refers to a nucleic acid that takes part in the production of proteins.

8. substrate refers to a compound, which takes part in a chemical reaction, and is chemically modified by the reaction.