Public Health Harvard Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation Hillary Genetic Engineering Genetic engineering is a vital area on the development of bioweapons, and one area where Cuba has had surprising achievements. Genetic engineering refers to a set of technologies that artificially move functional genes across species boundaries to produce novel organisms. The techniques involve highly sophisticated manipulations of genetic material and other biological important chemicals.
Genes are special chemicals that work as sets of blueprints to determine an organism's traits.
Moving genes from one organism to another moves those traits. Through genetic engineering, genes can be moved across natural boundaries. Such a technology is radically different from traditional plant and animal breeding. Most of the work involves isolation and identification of genes- the components within DNA which contain all the information for the synthesis of everything in every living cell. The information in a gene is a code.