BIOTECHNOLOGY : Comprehensive Encyclopedia

Biotechnology is technology based on biology, especially when used in agriculture, food science, and medicine.

Of the many different definitions available, the one formulated by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity is one of the broadest:

"Biotechnology means any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use." (Article 2. Use of Terms)

Biotechnology can also be defined as the manipulation of organisms to do practical things and to provide useful products.

One aspect of biotechnology is the directed use of organisms for the manufacture of organic products (examples include beer and milk products. For another example, naturally present bacteria are utilized by the mining industry in bioleaching. Biotechnology is also used to recycle, treat waste, clean up sites contaminated by industrial activities (bioremediation), and produce biological weapons.

There are also applications of biotechnology that do not use living organisms. Examples are DNA microarrays used in genetics and radioactive tracers used in medicine.

Red biotechnology is applied to medical processes. Some examples are the designing of organisms to produce antibiotics, and the engineering of genetic cures through genomic manipulation.

White biotechnology, also known as grey biotechnology, is biotechnology applied to industrial processes. An example is the designing of an organism to produce a useful chemical. White biotechnology tends to consume less in resources than traditional processes used to produce industrial goods.

Green biotechnology is biotechnology applied to agricultural processes. An example is the designing of transgenic plants to grow under specific environmental conditions or in the presence (or absence) of certain agricultural chemicals. One hope is that green biotechnology might produce more environmentally friendly solutions than traditional industrial agriculture. An example of this is the engineering of a plant to express a pesticide, thereby eliminating the need for external application of pesticides. An example of this would be Bt corn. Whether or not green biotechnology products such as this are ultimately more environmentally friendly is a topic of considerable debate.

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field which addresses biological problems using computational techniques. The field is also often referred to as computational biology. It plays a key role in various areas, such as functional genomics, structural genomics, and proteomics, and forms a key component in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector.

The term blue biotechnology has also been used to describe the marine and aquatic applications of biotechnology, but its use is relatively rare.

1 Biotechnology medical products
2 History
- 2.1 Biotechnology timeline
3 Biotechnology global trends
4 Biotechnology firms
5 Key visionaries and personalities in biotechnology sector
6 See also
- 6.1 Compare with
7 External links

Biotechnology medical products

Traditional pharmaceutical drugs are small chemicals molecules that treat the symptoms of a disease or illness - one molecule directed at a single target. Biopharmaceuticals are large biological molecules known as proteins and these target the underlying mechanisms and pathways of a malady; it is a relatively young industry. They can deal with targets in humans that are not accessible with traditional medicines. A patient typically is dosed with a small molecule via a tablet while a large molecule is typically injected.

Small molecules are manufactured by chemistry but large molecules are created by living cells: for example, - bacteria cells, yeast cell,animal cells.

Modern biotechnology is often associated with the use of genetically altered microorganisms such as E. coli or yeast for the production of substances like insulin or antibiotics. It can also refer to transgenic animals or transgenic plants, such as Bt corn. Genetically altered mammalian cells, such as Chinese Hamster Ovarian (CHO) cells, are also widely used to manufacture pharmaceuticals. Another promising new biotechnology application is the development of plant-made pharmaceuticals.

Biotechnology is also commonly associated with landmark breakthroughs in new medical therapies to treat diabetes, hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Cancers, Arthritis, Haemophilia Bone Fractures,Multiple Sclerosis, Cardiovascular as well as molecular diagnostic devices than can be used to define the patient population. Herceptin, is the first drug approved for use with a matching diagnostic test and is used to treat breast cancer in women whose cancer cells express the protein HER2.

History

Main article: History of Biotechnology

Early cultures also understood the importance of using natural processes to breakdown waste products into inert forms. From very early nomadic tribes to pre-urban civilizations it was common knowledge that given enough time organic waste products would be absorbed and eventually integrated into the soil. It was not until the advent of modern microbiology and chemistry that this process was fully understood and attributed to bacteria.

The most practical use of biotechnology, which is still present today, is the cultivations of plants to produce food suitable to humans. Agriculture has been theorized to have become the dominant way of producing food since the Neolithic Revolution. The processes and methods of agriculture have been refined by other mechanical and biological sciences since its inception. Through early biotechnology farmers were able to select the best suited and high-yield crops to produce enough food to support a growing population. Other uses of biotechnology were required as crops and fields became increasingly large and difficult to maintain. Specific organisms and organism byproducts were used to fertilize, restore nitrogen, and control pests. Throughout the use of agriculture farmers have inadvertently altered the genetics of their crops through introducing them to new environments, breeding them with other plants, and by using artificial selection. In modern times some plants are genetically modified to produce specific nutritional values or to be economical.

The process of Ethanol fermentation was also one of the first forms of biotechnology. Cultures such as those in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Iran developed the process of brewing which consisted of combining malted grains with specifics yeasts to produce alcoholic beverages. In this process the carbohydrates in the grains were broken down into alcohols such as ethanol. Later other cultures produced the process of Lactic acid fermentation which allowed the fermentation and preservation of other forms of food. Fermentation was also used in this time period to produce leavened bread. Although the process of fermentation was not fully understood until Louis Pasteur’s work in 1857, it is still the first use of biotechnology to convert a food source into another form.

Combinations of plants and other organisms were used as medications in many early civilizations. Since as early as 200 BC people began to use disabled or minute amounts of infectious agents to immunize themselves against infections. These and similar processes have been refined in modern medicine and have lead to many developments such as antibiotics, vaccines, and other methods of fighting sickness.

A more recent field in biotechnology is that of genetic engineering. Genetic modification has opened up many new fields of biotechnology and allowed the modification of plants, animals, and even humans on a molecular level.

Biotechnology timeline

8000 BC Collecting of seeds for replanting. Evidence that Mesopotamian people used selective breeding (artificial selection) practices to improve livestock.
6000 BC Brewing beer, fermenting wine, baking bread with help of yeast
4000 BC Chinese made yogurt and cheese with lactic-acid-producing bacteria
1500 AD Plant collecting around the world
1590 AD The microscope is invented by Zacharias Janssen.
1675 AD Microorganisms discovered (using first microscope)
1856 AD Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of inheritance
1919 AD Karl Ereky, a Hungarian agricultural engineer, first used the word biotechnology
1953 AD James D. Watson, Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, and Francis Crick describe the structure of DNA
1975 AD Method for producing monoclonal antibody developed by Kohler and Milstein
1980 AD Modern biotech is characterized by recombinant DNA technology. The prokaryote model, E. coli, is used to produce insulin and other medicine, in human form. (About 5% of diabetics are allergic to animal insulins available before)
1994 AD FDA approves of the first GM food from Calgene: "Flavr Savr" tomato
1997 AD British scientists from the Roslin Institute report cloning a sheep called Dolly using DNA from two adult sheep cells. Keith Campbell has now been given 66% of the credit for cloning Dolly the Sheep. Ian Wilmut's role in cloning Dolly the Sheep is disputed and remains in doubt.
2000 AD Completion of a "rough draft" of the genome in Human Genome Project
2002 AD Researchers sequence the DNA of rice, the main food source for two-thirds of the world's population. Rice is the first crop to have its genome decoded.
2003 AD Fifty years after the description of the structure of DNA, the human genoma project is finalized (April 14).

Biotechnology global trends

Sales of biotechnology products have achieved sales in excess of $500 billion per year and a growth rate of 24% since the turn of the century. The greatest growth has been in Latin America but all regions of the world have shown strong growth trends.

There has been little innovation in the traditional pharmaceutical industry over the past decade and biopharmaceuticals are now achieving the fastest rates of growth against this background, particularly in breast cancer treatment. Biopharmaceuticals typically treat sub-sets of the total population with a disease whereas traditional drugs are developed to treat the population as a whole. However, one of the great difficulties with traditional drugs are the toxic side effects the incidence of which can be unpredictable in individual patients.

Biotechnology firms

Main article: List of biotechnology companies

There are in the region of 4,000 biotechnology firms across the globe and almost 50% of these are in the European Union; 30% in the US and the balance in Asia. The leading biotechnology firms based on performance in 2005 are: