CHAPTER 2

DEVELOPMENT OF BIOLOGY FIELDS

Biotechnology and areas of

applications

Impacts of new discoveries in biology

Agriculture
1. Improvement of conventional plant breeding

exp: hybrid seeds and mutation breeding

2. Tissue culture and micropropagation

3.

entire plant can be regenerated from a single cell.

Micropropogation: production of disease-free, high quality planting
material and for rapid production of many uniform plants.

Molecular breeding or marker assisted selection

used in integration of important genes into plant

Exp: development of rice variety with bacterial blight resistance,
increased beta carotene content, and submergence tolerance.

Impacts of new discoveries in biology

Agriculture
Agriculture:
4. Genetic engineering and GM crops

Impacts of new discoveries in biology

Health care & medicine
The tools of biotechnology are altering many other
aspects of health care:
It provides new tools and strategies for improvement
in health care applications:
Diagnosing diseases and disorders
Treating, curing and preventing diseases and disorders
New methods of drug discovery and pharmaceutical
manufacturing

General characteristics of better

technique in health care

Provide significantly more information for improving health.

Provide the same information faster and/or cheaper.
Identifies the root cause not a symptom.
Allow early intervention in the disease process.
lessens the harmful impacts of the disease and may even
provide opportunity to cure the disease.
Shift the clinical strategy:
disease management cure
disease treatment disease prevention
Has fewer adverse side effects
More efficient and/or affordable

New diagnostics tools

A physicians success in curing a disease depends on
diagnosing it accurately.
Old technology:
diagnosis based on subjective information (patient and
observation)
New technology:
Availability of diagnostics tools that made invisible
symptoms visible.
Consequence:
Help reveal diseases (exp:cancer) before clinical symptoms
appear

1. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

An MRI machine uses a powerful magnetic field to align the
magnetization of some atoms in the body, and radio
frequency fields to systematically alter the alignment of this
magnetization.
This causes the nuclei to produce a rotating magnetic field
detectable by the scanner.
This information is recorded to construct an image of the
scanned area of the body.
Strong magnetic field gradients cause nuclei at different
locations to rotate at different speeds.

Magnetic Resonance (MR) Imaging

Colorectal cancer (pT3, pN1, M1) and a solitary liver
metastasis in 64-year-old man

Vogl T J et al. Radiology 2008;249:865-871

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals

conscious activity in vegetative brains

Latest study published in 2012 through The New England

Journal of Medicine gives credence to the notion that some
patients who have been classified as vegetative are actually
conscious, and a rare few may be able to communicate.

2. Monoclonal Antibodies (mAb) in Cancer

detection
mAb that bind specifically to cancer cell surface antigen can
be used to determine whether a patient has cancer.
Radioactive isotope is attached to the mAb that bind to
cancer cells.
Radiolabeled antibodies confirm that patients cancer has
spread or not .
It also help to identify the cancer stage.

2. Monoclonal Antibodies (mAb) in Cancer

detection
In this image, dark areas
detected in the lymph
nodes of the armpit, neck
and groin
Patients liver and spleen
are also darkened

3. Molecular Based Imaging (MBI) and

Mammograms
Molecular imaging differs from traditional imaging in that
probes known as biomarkers are used to help image particular
targets or pathways.
Biomarkers interact chemically with their surroundings and in
turn alter the image according to molecular changes occurring
within the area of interest.
Women are given an intravenous dose of a short-acting tracer
that is absorbed more by abnormal cells than healthy ones.
Special cameras collect the "glow" these cells give off, and
doctors look at the picture to spot tumors.

3. Molecular Based Imaging (MBI) and

Mammograms

Mammogram:
negative result

MBI: positive
result shows by
arrow

Early Detection of Contagious Diseases

Use of mAb diagnostics for infectious disease that can be
passed from one person to another.
Accurately identify pathogens such as bacteria cause strep
throat, chlamydia, gonorrhea in minutes instead of 2 or 3
days.
Disease diagnosis based on a unique molecular component
rather than the whole organism.
mAb diagnostics allow detection of pathogens that cannot
be cultured.

Early Detection of Contagious Diseases

Early detection and treatment have important public health
implications.
Exp: Improvements in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
Early 1980s:
The only available HIV diagnostic was AIDS (acquired immune
deficiency syndrom), a clinical manifestation of HIV infection.
A number of conditions that rarely occur in people are AIDSdefining illness.
For most HIV infected individuals, signs of AIDS defining illness
do not appear until 9-10 years after infection.
Some individuals never develop AIDS defining illness.
Infected individuals unknowingly transmit HIV to partners.

AIDS Diagnosis

A micrograph shows lymph nodes containing a

tremendous number of bacteria Mycobacterium
avium-intracellulare that usually infect birds not
human

Kaposis sarcoma is a cancerous

disease caused by the viral agent
Human Herpesvirus 8

HIV INFECTION begins with a sharp rise of virus in the blood (orange
line) and a consequent drop in CD4 T cells (blue line). The immune
system soon recovers somewhat, however, and keeps HIV levels fairly
steady for several years. AIDS is diagnosed when the CD4 T cell level
drops below 200 cells per cubic millimeter of blood

AIDS Diagnosis
1981- physicians did not know what caused AIDS
1983- researchers identified the link between HIV infection
and AIDS.
Began developing test for detecting HIV in presymptomatic
individuals.
The first HIV diagnostic tests based on antibody-antigen
interaction.
Could identify infected individuals 6 to 12 months after
they contracted the virus.

AIDS Diagnosis
Patient HIV infected

Antibody to HIV

HIV protein

The blood contains

antibodies to HIV
The patients antibodies
specifically bind to the purified
HIV proteins in the diagnostic
test, the blood washed off, but
HIV antibodies stay bound to
HIV antigens

Monoclonal antibodies
with a fluorescent tag are
added

AIDS Diagnosis
Unknowingly spreading the infection for 6 months still
constitutes a major public health problem.
Improvement in detection technologies increased test
sensitivity and decreased time for detection to 3 months.
As HIV genes sequences identified a new diagnostic based on
HIV genetic material improved the speed and sensitivity to
HIV detection.

Testing for the presence of a DNA

sequence by using PCR
Unknown Sample B

Unknown Sample A

Add primers specific to

target DNA, nucleotides
and DNA polymerase

PCR product is
present,
therefore,
sample A
contains the
target DNA

No PCR
product,
therefore the
target was not
present in the
sample

Biotechnology Therapeutics
Advances in cell and molecular biology provide improved
version of existing therapies.
Specificity; understanding the specificities of molecular
interactions leads to therapeutic compounds that are most
targeted.
i.e biology-based cancer treatments
Chemotherapy can severely disable patients because of the
toxic chemicals intended for the cancer cell do not distinguish
cancer cells from normal cells.
One approach to use monoclonal antibodies that bind very
selectively to cancer cells.
Physicians link the antibody to a chemotherapeutic toxin, and
the antibody delivers it quite specifically to cancer cells.

Targeted therapy with monoclonal antibodies. The cytoplasm of tumor

cells in breast tissue is stained brown with a monoclonal antibody that
recognizes an antigen that occurs in cancer cells but is rare in normal
differentiated cells

Biotechnology Therapeutics
Many of the new therapeutics are natural products
synthesized by plants, microbes, insects and other
animals.
i.e B-glucans, reduce bad cholesterol level,
Tocotrienol (palm oil) prevent breast cancer.

Requires improved biology methods.

Gene therapy
Gene theraphy : use of genes or related molecules such as
RNA to treat diseases
Rather than giving daily injections of missing and
malfunctioning proteins, it supply patient with accurate
instruction manuals nondefective genes.
Only some hereditary diseases are amenable to correction via
replacement gene therapy
Primary candidates are diseases caused by lack of protein
such as hemophilia and severe combined immunodeficiency
disease

A child with severe combined immunodeciency disease (SCID), also called

bubble boy disease, is extremely susceptible to infection because of a
malfunctioning immune system. He would not survive outside carefully
controlled environments, such as the enclosed area pictured here.