Abstract
Biologists once could only study plants and animals at a macroscopic level, whatever was visible with the naked eye. The development of optical microscopes made it possible to discover and view cells, the fundamental building blocks of living tissue. When microscopes became even more powerful, it became evident that cells were highly complex structures containing components having discrete functions. The introduction of biochemical technologies capable of manipulating reactions occurring in biological systems enabled a quantum leap in “visualizing” biological molecules and gave birth to the field of molecular biology. Within this field, genetics have become a focus area of study, and the understanding of how genes affect growth and development has led to efforts to control these processes by “genetic engineering.”
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Baran, G.R., Kiani, M.F., Samuel, S.P. (2014). Genetic Engineering. In: Healthcare and Biomedical Technology in the 21st Century. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8541-4_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8541-4_12
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