Black Mirror - S: 5, E: 1 by Sadie

Black Mirror - S: 5, E: 1 by Sadie - February 2018 Scholarship Essay

Imagine, you turn off the lights and everything has a green glow, the people the animals, everything has a luminescent tinge to it. Sounds like the newest episode of Black Mirror if you ask me, but let's face it, technology is going to continue to grow and advance in the future whether we are opposed to it or not. If bees end up going extinct, we aren't going to quit, we're going to find some robotic, technologically engineered mechanism to do their jobs. If we already have genetically modified animals, who says the same won't happen to humans?

A new scientific and technological breakthrough has happened: gene modification and the transformation of organisms. Biotechnologists have discovered a way to show gene transfer in animals by imputing a certain gene which results in a bioluminescent organism. In other words, the finished product is an animal that glows in the dark. Now why would we need this? Since all living organisms are coded by the same four bases, it should be effortless for different genes to cross the species barrier. This would result in new proteins formed to help advance and evolve the animal. This is achieved with a jellyfish gene that codes for a green fluorescent protein (GFP). Once the GFP is inserted into the embryonic stage through high tech machinery, once the animal grows up, scientists are able to track where the gene has manifested and replicated itself within the animal.

By the year 2038, bioluminescent tech due to genetically modified organism will be a whole chapter in biology books, not just a paragraph. Students will be taught how to track certain genes in other animals in order to modify and reproduce the best of the best. While GMO's constantly receive a bad rep, the majority of food and animals today are genetically modified. Scientists now are trying ti find a way to modify them to better help the environment and the advancement in technology that biotechnologists have made, is the first step in the right direction.