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Mol Bio Biotech

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23 views5 pages

Mol Bio Biotech

Uploaded by

Krystel Lahom
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What Is Biotechnology?

Biotechnology is a science-driven industry sector that makes use of living organisms and
molecular biology to produce healthcare-related products and therapeutics or to run processes
(such as DNA fingerprinting). Biotechnology is best known for its increasingly important role in
the fields of medicine and pharmaceuticals, and is also applied in other areas such as
genomics, food production, and the production of biofuels.

Biotechnology involves understanding how living organisms function at the molecular level, so it
combines a number of disciplines including biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, science
and technology. Modern biotechnology continues to make very significant contributions to
extending the human lifespan and improving the quality of life through numerous ways,
including providing products and therapies to combat diseases, generating higher crop yields,
and using biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Hungarian engineer Karl Ereky
reportedly coined the term “biotechnology,” which is often referred to as “biotech,” in 1919.

Companies in the biotech space tend to face significant barriers to success. One critical reason
for this is that research and development costs for biotech names tend to be incredibly high.
While a company is focusing its time and money in these areas, there's usually very little by way
of revenue. It's not uncommon, therefore, for biotech companies to work together with larger,
more established firms in order to achieve their research and development goals. Before these
goals are met, a biotech company is incredibly fragile. Perhaps this is why the biotech space,
while always growing with new names, has more and more come to be dominated by a small
group of large companies in recent years. Biotechnology companies are thus almost always
unprofitable (some suggest that the distinction between "biotech" and "pharmaceutical"
company lies in profitability), and many have no real revenue at all.

1. Medical Biotechnology

Medical biotechnology is the use of living cells and other cell materials to better the health of
humans. Primarily, it is used for finding cures as well as getting rid of and preventing diseases.
The science involved includes the use of these tools for research to find different or more
efficient ways of maintaining human health, understanding pathogens, and understanding
human cell biology.

Here, the technique is used to produce pharmaceutical drugs as well as other chemicals to
combat diseases. It involves the study of bacteria, plant & animal cells, to first understand the
way they function at a fundamental level.

It heavily involves the study of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) to get to know how to manipulate
the genetic makeup of cells to increase the production of beneficial characteristics that humans
might find useful, such as the production of insulin.

2. Agricultural Biotechnology

Agricultural biotechnology focuses on developing genetically modified plants to increase crop


yields or introduce characteristics to those plants that provide them with an advantage growing
in regions that place some kind of stress factor on the plant, namely weather, and pests.

In some of the cases, the practice involves scientists identifying a characteristic, finding the
gene that causes it, and then putting that gene within another plant so that it gains that desirable
characteristic, making it more durable or having it produce larger yields than it previously did.

3. Industrial Biotechnology

Industrial biotechnology is the application of biotechnology for industrial purposes that also
include industrial fermentation. Applying the techniques of modern molecular biology, it
improves efficiency and reduces the multifaceted environmental impacts of industrial processes
including paper and pulp, chemical manufacturing, and textile.

It includes the practice of using cells such as microorganisms, or components of cells like
enzymes, to generate products in sectors that are industrially useful, such as food and feed,
chemicals, detergents, paper and pulp, textiles, biofuels, and biogas.
In the current decade, significant progress has been made in creating genetically modified
organisms (GMOs) that enhance the diversity of applications and the economic viability of
industrial biotechnology.

4. Environmental Biotechnology

Environmental biotechnology is the technology used in waste treatment and pollution prevention
that can more efficiently clean up many wastes compared to conventional methods and
significantly reduce our dependence on methods for land-based disposal.

Every organism ingests nutrients to live and produces byproducts as a result. But, different
organisms need different types of nutrients. Some bacteria also thrive on the chemical
components of waste products.

Environmental engineers introduce nutrients to stimulate the activity of bacteria that already
exists in the soil at a waste site or add new bacteria to the soil. The bacteria help in digesting
the waste right at the site, thereby turning it into harmless byproducts.

After consuming the waste materials, the bacteria either die off or return to their normal
population levels in the environment. There are cases where the byproducts of the
pollution-fighting microorganisms are themselves useful.

Color Classification of Branches of Biotechnology

Gold biotechnology or Bioinformatics referred to as computational biology and can be defined


as “conceptualizing biology” to address biological problems using computational techniques and
makes the rapid organization as well as analysis of biological data possible.

Red Biotechnology (Biopharma) relates to medicine and veterinary products. It can help
developing new drugs, regenerative therapies, produce vaccines and antibiotics, molecular
diagnostics techniques, and genetic engineering techniques to cure diseases applying genetic
manipulation.
White Biotechnology draws inspiration from industrial biotech to design more energy-efficient,
less polluting, and low resource-consuming processes and products that can beat traditional
ones.

Yellow Biotechnology relates to the use of biotechnology in food production, for example, in
making wine, cheese, and beer by fermentation.

Grey Biotechnology refers to environmental applications to maintain biodiversity and the


removal of pollutants or contaminants using microorganisms and plants to isolate and dispose
of many kinds of substances such as heavy metals and hydrocarbons.

Green Biotechnology emphasizes on agriculture that involves creating new plant varieties of
agricultural interest, biopesticides, and biofertilizers.

This area of biotech is exclusively based on transgenics (genetic modification), i.e., an extra
gene or genes inserted into their DNA. The additional gene may come from the same species or
a different species.

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