Genetic Engineering Bioengineering, or genetic engineering is an altering of genes in a particular species for a particular outcome. It involves taking genes from their normal location in one organism and either transferring them elsewhere or putting them back into the original organism in different combinations. Most biomolecules exist in low concentrations and as complex, mixed populations which it is not possible to work efficiently. This problem was solved in 1970 using a bug, Escherichia coli, a normally innocuous commensal occupant of the human gut. By inserting a piece of DNA of interest into a vector molecule, a molecule with a b