Abstract
Imagine that you want to force a cell to make a certain protein in large quantity. What could you do to subvert the cell’s normal operations to do your bidding? It might be enough to inject a short piece of DNA that encodes the protein. The molecular machinery in the nucleus would then transcribe the foreign DNA into mRNA, which would in turn be translated into your protein in the cytoplasm. This is how many genetic engineering companies currently coax bacteria and yeast cells to make large quantities of insulin and growth hormone for medical applications.
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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Goodsell, D.S. (1993). Viruses: Biological Highjackers. In: The Machinery of Life. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2267-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2267-3_9
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
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