Biotechnology is the use of living systems and organisms
to develop or make useful products, or "any technological application that
uses biological systems, living organisms or derivatives thereof, to make or
modify products or processes for specific use" (UN Convention on
Biological Diversity, Art. 2). Depending on the tools and applications, it
often overlaps with the (related) fields of bioengineering and biomedical engineering.
For thousands of years,
humankind has used biotechnology in agriculture, food production, and medicine.
The term itself is largely believed to have been coined in 1919 by Hungarian
engineer Károly
Ereky. In the late 20th and early 21st century, biotechnology has
expanded to include new and diverse sciences such as genomics,recombinant
gene technologies,
applied immunology, and
development of pharmaceutical therapies and diagnostic
tests.
Definitions
The wide concept of
"biotech" or "biotechnology" encompasses a wide range of
procedures (and history) for modifying living organisms according to human
purposes, going back to domestication of animals, cultivation of plants, and
"improvements" to these through breeding programs that employ artificial selection and hybridization.
Modern usage also includes genetic engineering as well
as cell and tissue
culture technologies.
The American Chemical Society defines biotechnology as the application of
biological organisms, systems, or processes by various industries to learning
about the science of life and the improvement of the value of materials and
organisms such as pharmaceuticals, crops, and livestock. Biotechnology also writes on the pure
biological sciences (animal cell culture, biochemistry, cell
biology, embryology, genetics, microbiology, and molecular
biology). In many instances, it is also dependent on knowledge and
methods from outside the sphere of biology including:
Conversely, modern biological
sciences (including even concepts such as molecular
ecology) are intimately entwined and heavily dependent on the methods
developed through biotechnology and what is commonly thought of as the life
sciences industry.
Biotechnology is the research and development in the laboratory using bioinformatics for exploration, extraction, exploitation
and production from any living
organisms and any
source of biomass by means ofbiochemical engineering where high value-added products could be
planned (reproduced by biosynthesis, for
example), forecasted, formulated, developed, manufactured and marketed for the
purpose of sustainable operations (for the return from bottomless initial
investment on R & D) and gaining durable patents rights (for exclusives
rights for sales, and prior to this to receive national and international
approval from the results on animal experiment and human experiment, especially
on the pharmaceutical branch of biotechnology to prevent any
undetected side-effects or safety concerns by using the products).
By contrast, bioengineering is generally thought of as a related field
that more heavily emphasizes higher systems approaches (not necessarily the
altering or using of biological materials directly)
for interfacing with and utilizing living things. Bioengineering is the
application of the principles of engineering and natural sciences to tissues,
cells and molecules. This can be considered as the use of knowledge from
working with and manipulating biology to achieve a result that can improve
functions in plants and animals. Relatedly, biomedical engineering is an overlapping field that often draws
upon and applies biotechnology (by various definitions), especially
in certain sub-fields of biomedical and/or chemical engineering such as tissue engineering, biopharmaceutical engineering, and genetic engineering.
History
Although not normally what
first comes to mind, many forms of human-derived agriculture clearly fit the broad definition of
"'using a biotechnological system to make products". Indeed, the
cultivation of plants may be viewed as the earliest biotechnological
enterprise.
Agriculture has been theorized to have become the
dominant way of producing food since the Neolithic Revolution. Through early biotechnology, the
earliest farmers selected and bred the best suited crops, having the highest
yields, to produce enough food to support a growing population. As crops and
fields became increasingly large and difficult to maintain, it was discovered
that specific organisms and their by-products could effectivelyfertilize, restore
nitrogen, and control
pests. Throughout the history of agriculture, farmers have
inadvertently altered the genetics of their crops through introducing them to
new environments and breeding them with other plants — one of the first
forms of biotechnology.
These processes also were
included in early fermentation of beer. These
processes were introduced in early Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and India, and
still use the same basic biological methods. In brewing,
malted grains (containing enzymes)
convert starch from grains into sugar and then adding specific yeasts to produce beer. In this process, 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, such as soy
sauce. 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.
For thousands of years, humans
have used selective breeding to improve production of crops and livestock to
use them for food. In selective breeding, organisms with desirable
characteristics are mated to produce offspring with the same characteristics.
For example, this technique was used with corn to produce the largest and
sweetest crops.
In the early twentieth century
scientists gained a greater understanding of microbiology and explored ways of manufacturing specific
products. In 1917, Chaim
Weizmann first
used a pure microbiological culture in an industrial process, that of
manufacturing corn
starch using Clostridium acetobutylicum, to produce acetone, which
the United
Kingdom desperately
needed to manufacture explosives during World
War I.
Biotechnology has also led to
the development of antibiotics. In 1928, Alexander
Fleming discovered
the moldPenicillium. His work led to the
purification of the antibiotic compound formed by the mold by Howard Florey,
Ernst Boris Chain and Norman Heatley - to form what we today know as penicillin. In
1940, penicillin became available for medicinal use to treat bacterial
infections in humans.
The field of modern
biotechnology is generally thought of as having been born in 1971 when Paul
Berg's (Stanford) experiments in gene splicing had early success. Herbert W.
Boyer (Univ. Calif. at San Francisco) and Stanley N. Cohen (Stanford)
significantly advanced the new technology in 1972 by transferring genetic
material into a bacterium, such that the imported material would be reproduced.
The commercial viability of a biotechnology industry was significantly expanded
on June 16, 1980, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that a genetically modifiedmicroorganism could be patented in the case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty.
Indian-born Ananda Chakrabarty, working for General
Electric, had modified a bacterium (of the Pseudomonas genus) capable of breaking down crude oil,
which he proposed to use in treating oil spills. (Chakrabarty's work did not
involve gene manipulation but rather the transfer of entire organelles between
strains of the Pseudomonas bacterium.
Revenue in the industry is
expected to grow by 12.9% in 2008. Another factor influencing the biotechnology
sector's success is improved intellectual property rights legislation—and
enforcement—worldwide, as well as strengthened demand for medical and
pharmaceutical products to cope with an ageing, and ailing, U.S. population.
Rising demand for biofuels is
expected to be good news for the biotechnology sector, with the Department of Energyestimating ethanol usage could reduce U.S. petroleum-derived
fuel consumption by up to 30% by 2030. The biotechnology sector has allowed the
U.S. farming industry to rapidly increase its supply of corn and soybeans—the
main inputs into biofuels—by developing genetically modified seeds which are
resistant to pests and drought. By boosting farm productivity, biotechnology
plays a crucial role in ensuring that biofuel production targets are met.
Applications
Biotechnology has applications
in four major industrial areas, including health care (medical), crop
production and agriculture, non food (industrial) uses of crops and other
products (e.g. biodegradable plastics, vegetable
oil, biofuels), and
environmental uses.
For example, one application of
biotechnology is the directed use oforganisms for the manufacture of organic products
(examples include beerand milk products). Another example is using
naturally present bacteria by the mining industry in bioleaching.
Biotechnology is also used to recycle, treat waste, cleanup sites contaminated
by industrial activities (bioremediation), and
also to produce biological weapons.
A series of derived terms have
been coined to identify several branches of biotechnology; for example:
·
Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field which
addresses biological problems using computational techniques, and makes the
rapid organization as well as analysis of biological data possible. The field
may also be referred to as computational
biology, and can be defined as, "conceptualizing biology in terms of
molecules and then applying informatics techniques to understand and organize
the information associated with these molecules, on a large scale."
Bioinformatics plays a key role in various areas, such asfunctional genomics, structural genomics, and proteomics, and
forms a key component in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector.
·
Blue biotechnology is a term that has been used to describe
the marine and aquatic applications of biotechnology, but its use is relatively
rare.
·
Green biotechnology is biotechnology applied to agricultural
processes. An example would be the selection and domestication of plants via micropropagation.
Another example is the designing of transgenic
plants to grow
under specific environments in the presence (or absence) of 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 ending the need of 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.
·
Red
biotechnology is
applied to medical processes. Some examples are the designing of organisms to
produceantibiotics, and the engineering of genetic cures
through genetic manipulation.
·
White biotechnology, also
known as industrial biotechnology, is biotechnology applied to industrial processes. An example is the designing of
an organism to produce a useful chemical. Another example is the using ofenzymes as industrial catalysts to either produce valuable chemicals or
destroy hazardous/polluting chemicals. White biotechnology tends to consume
less in resources than traditional processes used to produce industrial goods. http://www.bio-entrepreneur.net/Advance-definition-biotech.pdf}
The investment and economic
output of all of these types of applied biotechnologies is termed as "bioeconomy".
Medicine
In medicine, modern
biotechnology finds applications in areas such as pharmaceutical drug discovery
and production, pharmacogenomics, and
genetic testing (or genetic screening).
Pharmacogenomics (a combination of pharmacology and genomics) is
the technology that analyses how genetic makeup affects an individual's
response to drugs.It deals with the influence of genetic variation on drug response in patients by
correlating gene
expression or single-nucleotide polymorphisms with a drug's efficacy or toxicity. By doing so, pharmacogenomics aims to
develop rational means to optimize drug therapy, with respect to the patients' genotype, to
ensure maximum efficacy with minimal adverse effects. Such
approaches promise the advent of "personalized medicine"; in which drugs and drug
combinations are optimized for each individual's unique genetic makeup.
Computer-generated
image of insulin hexamers highlighting the threefold symmetry, the zinc ions holding it together, and the histidineresidues
involved in zinc binding.
Biotechnology has contributed
to the discovery and manufacturing of traditional small
molecule pharmaceutical drugs as well as drugs that are the product of
biotechnology - biopharmaceutics.
Modern biotechnology can be used to manufacture existing medicines relatively
easily and cheaply. The first genetically engineered products were medicines
designed to treat human diseases. To cite one example, in 1978Genentech developed synthetic humanized insulin by joining its gene with aplasmid vector inserted into the bacterium Escherichia
coli. Insulin, widely used for the treatment of diabetes, was
previously extracted from the pancreas of abattoir animals (cattle and/or pigs). The resulting
genetically engineered bacterium enabled the production of vast quantities of
synthetic human insulin at relatively low cost. Biotechnology has also enabled
emerging therapeutics like gene
therapy. The application of biotechnology to basic science (for example
through the Human Genome Project) has also dramatically
improved our understanding of biology and as our scientific knowledge of normal
and disease biology has increased, our ability to develop new medicines to
treat previously untreatable diseases has increased as well.
Genetic
testing allows
the genetic diagnosis of vulnerabilities to inherited diseases, and
can also be used to determine a child's parentage (genetic mother and father)
or in general a person's ancestry. In
addition to studyingchromosomes to the
level of individual genes, genetic testing in a broader sense includes biochemical tests for the possible presence of genetic
diseases, or mutant forms of genes associated with increased risk of developing
genetic disorders. Genetic testing identifies changes in chromosomes, genes,
or proteins. Most of the time, testing is used to find changes that are
associated with inherited disorders. The results of a genetic test can confirm
or rule out a suspected genetic condition or help determine a person's chance
of developing or passing on a genetic
disorder. As of 2011 several hundred genetic tests were in use. Since genetic testing may open up
ethical or psychological problems, genetic testing is often accompanied by genetic counseling.
Agriculture
Genetically modified crops ("GM crops", or "biotech
crops") are plants used in agriculture, the DNA of which has been modified using genetic engineering techniques.
In most cases the aim is to introduce a new trait to the plant which does not occur naturally
in the species.
Examples in food crops include
resistance to certain pests, diseases, stressful environmental conditions,
resistance to chemical treatments (e.g. resistance to a herbicide),
reduction of spoilage, or improving the nutrient profile of the crop. Examples
in non-food crops include production of pharmaceutical agents,biofuels,] and other industrially useful goods, as well as for bioremediation.
Farmers have widely adopted GM
technology. Between 1996 and 2011, the total surface area of land cultivated
with GM crops had increased by a factor of 94, from 17,000 square kilometers
(4,200,000 acres) to 1,600,000 km2 (395 million acres). 10% of the
world's crop lands were planted with GM crops in 2010. As of 2011, 11 different transgenic
crops were grown commercially on 395 million acres (160 million hectares) in 29
countries such as the USA, Brazil, Argentina, India, Canada, China, Paraguay,
Pakistan, South Africa, Uruguay, Bolivia, Australia, Philippines, Myanmar,
Burkina Faso, Mexico and Spain.
Genetically modified foods are foods produced from organisms that have had specific changes introduced
into theirDNA using the methods of genetic engineering. These techniques have allowed
for the introduction of new crop traits as well as a far greater control over a
food's genetic structure than previously afforded by methods such as selective breeding and mutation
breeding. Commercial sale
of genetically modified foods began in 1994, when Calgene first marketed its Flavr
Savr delayed
ripening tomato. To date most
genetic modification of foods have primarily focused on cash
crops in high
demand by farmers such as soybean, corn, canola, and cotton
seed oil. These have been engineered for resistance to pathogens and
herbicides and better nutrient profiles. GM livestock have also been
experimentally developed, although as of November 2013 none are currently on
the market.
There is broad scientific consensus that food on the market derived from GM
crops poses no greater risk to human health than conventional food. GM crops
also provide a number of ecological benefits, if not used in excess. However, opponents have objected to GM
crops per se on several grounds, including environmental concerns, whether food
produced from GM crops is safe, whether GM crops are needed to address the
world's food needs, and economic concerns raised by the fact these organisms
are subject to intellectual property law.
Industrial
biotechnology
An
industrial biotechnology plant for the production of modified wheat starch and
gluten
Industrial biotechnology (known
mainly in Europe as white biotechnology) is the application of biotechnology
for industrial purposes, including industrial fermentation. It includes the practice of
using cells such as micro-organisms, or
components of cells like enzymes, to
generate industriallyuseful
products in sectors such as chemicals, food and feed, detergents, paper and
pulp, textiles and biofuels.In doing
so, biotechnology uses renewable raw materials and may contribute to lowering
greenhouse gas emissions and moving away from a petrochemical-based economy.