The twentieth century was undoubtedly the age of chemistry and

physics, spawning huge industrial activities such as petrochemicals,

pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, the atom bomb, transmitters, the lase and microchips
etc. However, there can be little doubt that the huge understanding of the
fundamentals of life processes achieved in the latter part of the twentieth century
will ensure that the twenty-first century will be dominated by biology and its
associated technologies, especially biotechnology.

Biotechnology has been defined in many forms by many authors, in

essence, Biotechnology which is an interdisciplinary science has a strong
root in biology and biochemistry and is extensively used in engineering,
medicine, agriculture & technology and other valuable forms of
applications, etc. Briefly, it is merely an applied principles of chemistry,
physics, engineering and computer science comprise into biological
structure for the benefits of the Mankind and Environment etc. Unlike a
single scientific discipline, biotechnology can draw upon a wide array of relevant
fields, such as cell and molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology,
developmental biology and genetics, protein engineering, enzymology,
classified breeding techniques, and the full range of bioprocess
technologies, etc. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, biotechnology has
expanded to include new and diverse science(s) such as recombinant gene or
DNA technology, applied immunotechnology, genomics & proteomics and
bioinformatics, toxicogenomics & pharmacogenomics and drug design &
development process etc.,

The term Biotechnology was coined in 1919 by

Hungarian engineer Kroly Ereky. However, it has made huge development in the
very few spans of time. Biotechnology has been growing very rapidly and its
development has covered almost every sector.

The oldest biotechnological processes are found in microbial fermentations,

as long as before 6000 B.C., explaining the preparation of alcoholic beverages
such as wine and beer. For centuries humans have used microorganisms to
produce foods and drinks without understanding the microbial processes underlying
their production. In recent years the understanding of the biosynthetic pathways
and regulatory control mechanisms used by microorganisms for production of
several metabolites has been increased by developing the knowledge of
biochemistry of industrially important organisms. A wide variety of microorganisms
are now being employed as tools in biotechnology to produce useful products or
services. Beneficial microbes participate in fermentation processes, producing
many useful metabolites such as enzymes, organic acids, solvents, vitamins,
amino acids, antibiotics, growth regulators, flavors and nutritious foods.
Some leading food bioprocessing technologies are dairy processing, alcohol and

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beverage processing including wine, beer, whiskey, rum, shake, etc.
utilizing microorganisms like Clostridium acetobutylicum, Lecuonostoc
mesenteroides, Aspergillus oryzae, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Rizopus sp., Mucor
sp., etc. Biotechnologically produced organic acids like citric acid, acetic
acid, gluconic acid, D-Lactic acid, fumaric acid, etc. also has very high
market value.

Raw materials can be converted to useful finished products both by ordinary

chemical processes and by biological means. Generally, the costs of chemical
conversion are quite high as the reactions require high temperature or pressure. In
contrast, biological alternatives, using microbes or cultured animal or plant cells,
operate at physiologically normal conditions of temperature, pressure, pH, etc.
During the next few decades biotechnology would have overtaken
chemical technology, and many such chemicals which are today produced
chemically would be made through biotechnology.

Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or gene

biotechnology, is the direct manipulation of an
organism's genome using biotechnology. Genetic engineering has applications in
many fields such as medicine, research, industry and agriculture and can be
used on a wide range of plants, animals and microorganisms etc. Nowadays it
extends its applications in environmental science, forensic investigations & analysis
and evolutionary studies etc.

In medicine, genetic engineering has been used in manufacturing drugs,

creating model animals for human dieses and drug development & toxicity tests,
conducting laboratory research, and in gene therapy. Genetically modified
mice are the most common genetically engineered animal model. They
have been used to study and model cancer (the oncomouse), obesity,
heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, substance abuse, anxiety, aging and
Parkinson disease. Potential cures can be tested against these mouse
models. Also genetically modified pigs have been bred with the aim of increasing
the success of pig to human organ transplantation called Xenotransplantation.

Cloning is a relatively new sector of biotechnology, but it promises answers to

very important problems related to surgery. Tissues and organs could be cloned for
surgical purposes. If scientists could isolate stem cells and then direct their
development, they would be able to create any kind of a tissue, organ or even a
whole part of a body.

Gene therapy is the genetic engineering of humans, generally by replacing

defective genes with effective ones. This can occur in somatic tissue
or germline tissue. Somatic gene therapy has been studied in clinical
research in several diseases, including X-linked SCID, chronic lymphocytic

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leukemia (CLL), and Parkinson's disease. Genetic diseases could be
treated through the use of genetic engineering.

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. 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.

Biotechnology has also made it easier to detect and diagnose human, animal
and plant diseases. In clinical diagnosis there are now hundreds of specialized kits
available for simple home use or for complex laboratory procedures, such as blood
screening.

The genetic engineering techniques are also useful tools for genetic research.
They can help to gain in the structure, function and regulation of genes. They also
help to prepare the physical maps of any organism and viral genome. Maps of
several viruses have been made available like SV 40, Polyoma virus and
adenovirus.

In pharmaceutical industries, biotechnology plays its role though the

means of genetic engineering in the mass-production of recombinant
proteins, human growth hormones, human albumin, monoclonal
antibodies, antihemophilic factors, vaccines and many other
drugs. Biotechnology is widely used in pharmacy to create more efficient and less
expensive drugs. Recombinant DNA technology is used for production of specific
enzymes, which enhance the rate of production of particular range of antibodies in
the organism. The hormones such as somatostatin, insulin and the human growth
hormone can be synthesized easily and cheaply. The first human hormone to be
synthesized by genetic engineering was somatostatin. Somatostatin is brain
hormone originating from hypothalamus. It acts to inhabit the release of human
growth hormone and insulin is related to treatment of diabetes, pancreatitis and
few other conditions. Genentech, a California based company, has produced human
growth hormone (hGH) from genetically engineered bacteria. Human insulin or
humulin is the first genetically engineered pharmaceutical product,
developed by Eli Lilly and company in 1982. Bovine Somatotropin (BST) is

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produced for a large quantity of milk production in cows. Antibiotics are chemical
substances produced by several microorganisms. Recombinant DNA technology has
helped in increased production of antibiotics; for example, the rate of penicillin
produced at present is about 150,000 unit/ml against about 10 unit/ml in 1950s.
Antibiotics produced using such technology have very specific effects and cause
fewer side effects. Currently, scientists are working on vaccines for fatal
illnesses such as AIDS, hepatitis, malaria, flu, and even some forms of
cancer. Interferon, an anti-viral protein, is prepared from the mammalian
cells by recombinant DNA technology. Genetically engineered viruses are
being developed that can still confer immunity, but lack
the infectious sequences.

One of the best known applications of genetic engineering is that of the

creation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or Transgenic
organisms. There are potentially momentous biotechnological applications of GM,
for example oral vaccines produced naturally in fruit, at very low cost. A genetically
modified food is a food product derived in whole or part from a genetically modified
organism (GMO) such as a crop plant, animal or microbe such as yeast. The
principal ingredients of GM foods currently available are derived from genetically
modified soybean, maize and canola. Future applications of GMOs include
bananas that produce human vaccines against infectious diseases such as
Hepatitis B, fish that mature more quickly, fruit and nut trees that yield
years earlier, and plants that produce new plastics with unique properties.
Now scientists have transformed Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV) to infect
host plants and produce immunizing proteins rather than debilitating leaf
shrivel, turning greenhouse tobacco into a biofactory for plague vaccine.

Biotechnology has also revolutionized the field of agriculture through the

principles of genetic engineering that resulted in the production of transgenic plants
or genetically modified crops. This, in turn, therefore increased the crop
productivity and simultaneously profited the sector. These GM crops endure
changing climate condition, obtain an increase of nutritional qualities, resist to
disease, pests and also chemical insecticides, enhanced potential for more vigorous
growth and increasing yields etc.

Another important area of biotechnology is improvement of livestock.

Improvement in disease control, efficiency of reproduction, yields of livestock
products i.e. meat, milk, wool, eggs, composition of livestock products i.e. leaner
meat, feed value of low quality feeds i.e. straw; are some of the applications of
biotechnology.

Another revolutionizing tool of biotechnology is DNA fingerprinting. DNA

fingerprints are useful in several applications of human health care research, as
well as in the justice system. DNA fingerprinting is used to diagnose inherited

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disorders in both prenatal and newborn babies in hospitals around the world. These
disorders may include cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, Huntingtons disease, familial
Alzheimers, sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, and many others. Early detection of
such disorders enables the medical staff to prepare themselves and the parents for
proper treatment of the child. In some programs, genetic counselors use DNA
fingerprint information to help prospective parents understand the risk of having an
affected child. DNA fingerprint information can also help in developing cures for
inherited disorders. DNA fingerprints helps to link suspects to biological evidence
blood or semen stains, hair, or items of clothing found at the scene of a crime and
help in solving crime. Another important use of DNA fingerprints in the court system
is to establish paternity in custody and child support litigation.

Bioinformatics is the name given to the new discipline that has emerged at
the interface of biology and computing. Huge amount of genetic data (DNA, RNA,
amino acid and protein sequences) of various organisms, form bacteria to humans,
being generated worldwide is stored in a computer database. Specialized software
programs are used to find, visualize, and analyze the information, and most
importantly, communicate it to other people. Various computer tools are used to
predict protein structure which is a valuable information for development of
vaccines, diagnostic tools as well as more effective drugs. Bioinformatics can
help in easy and early detection of various diseases like cancer, diabetes
and many more with the help of microarray chips (microarrays are
miniature arrays of gene fragments attached to glass slides).
Bioinformatics also helps scientists to construct phylogenetic tree based
on molecular biology and ultimately contribute in the study of evolution.
Computer simulations model such things as population dynamics, or calculate the
cumulative genetic health of a breeding pool (in agriculture) or endangered
population (in conservation). One very exciting potential of this field is that
entire DNA sequences or genomes of endangered species can be
preserved.

Industrial biotechnology (known as white biotechnology) is the application

of biotechnology for industrial purposes, including industrial fermentation. It
includes the practice of using cells such as microorganisms, or
components of cells like enzymes, to generate industrially useful 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. They are used to give an improved effectiveness
and competence in production process while reducing the impact to the
environmental issues. Waste products can be treated and recycled as a help
to preserve natural resources. Not only this, biotechnology also includes study
and disposal mechanisms of various wastes. The waste of any type is studied
properly under Biotechnology and there after ways are found out to dispose it

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properly, so that it does not harm any biological diversity. For instance, Cleaning
up environmental wastes is an example of an application of environmental
biotechnology.

Another goal of biotechnology in this sector is to design super bug(s) Viz.

genetic engineering which can degrade most of the major hydrocarbon components
of petroleum. This multiplasmid bacterium is able to grow on a diet of crude oil. The
super bug has potential for clearing up oil spills. Other applications involve making
the bacteria perform tasks outside their natural cycle, such as
making biofuels, cleaning up oil spills, carbon and other toxic waste and detecting
arsenic in drinking water.] Certain genetically modified microbes can also be used
in biomining and bioremediation, due to their ability to extract heavy metals from
their environment and incorporate them into compounds that are more easily
recoverable.

Biotechnology has a promising future. In future biotechnology will be accredited for

some revolutionary technology. Recent advances in bioenergy, bioremediation,
synthetic biology, DNA computers, virtual cell, genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics
and bio-nanotechnology have made biotechnology even more powerful. Recent
discovery of conduction of electricity by DNA and its behavior as a superconductor
has opened a new realm in modern science. In future biotechnology will have
profound impact in world economy. Biotechnology is a golden tool to solve some of
the key global problems like global epidemic, fatal diseases, global warming, rising
petroleum fuel crisis and above all poverty.