Already the term "recombinant DNA" comes easily to the lips of legislators and television commentators. A few of them can even manage "deoxyribonucleic acid," which is what DNA stands for.

DNA is the genetic material, the miraculous selfreplicatirig double helix of Watson and Crick, the marrow, soul, and substance of all earthly life. Molecular biologists have been tinkering with it for a couple of decades now, and only recently have they learned to slice it up and then stick it back together in new ways: hence recombinant DNA. Scientists have also discovered ways to transfer it from one living thing to another: to put genes from one kind of animal into a different kind, from bacteria into plants, or to put the newly spliced genes into just about any living cell.