BioConcepts

genetic engineeringGenetisches Engineering (ger.)

• Originally: the production of desirable genotypes by selective breeding; the application of eugenics (now rare). Later also: the alteration of the genome of an organism by laboratory techniques, esp. by the insertion, alteration, or removal of a gene; the techniques involved in this process. (OED 2012)
  category artificial life

  1934

  The power of X-rays and radium to induce all known types of heritable variations makes the application of the radiation genetic methods most valuable for analytical genetic studies, for instance, in comparative genetics of related species, in quantitative studies of the mutabilities in different species and of different individual genes, in cytogenetics, in “genetic engineering” (i.e. in the synthesis of new genotypes and races).

  Timoféeff-Ressovsky, N.W. (1934). The experimental production of mutations. Biol. Rev. Cambr. Philos. Soc. 9, 411-457: 451.