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Biotechnology Information Resources
Biotechnology involves various
techniques that utilise living organisms or parts of organisms, to produce a
variety of useful products such as medicines or enzymes. These products can
be used to artificially improve animals and plants or to develop
microorganisms utilised to act as pesticides or to remove toxins from water.
Biotechnology as a field occurred as a convergence of genetics, molecular
biology, biochemistry and embryology, creating a body of expertise that has
produced a number of breakthroughs. The field itself is relatively new, only
being around 50 years old, and the majority of discoveries of note have
occurred in the last decade.
Biotechnology is arguably most useful in the domain of agriculture where
farmers have selected the best yielding crops for thousands of years.
Farmers have traditionally altered the genetic makeup of their crops by
changing their growing environments, using artificial selection practices
and through cross-pollinating them with other varieties.
‘Scientific’
biotechnology has been utilised within the modern era for the purposes of
generating specific organisms used to fertilise crops, control pests and to
restore nitrogen to the soil.
The traditional methods of altering the
genetic makeup of plants and crops are being superseded by processes of
scientific genetic modification, which can yield the same (or arguably
better results) within a much shorter time frame.
The most ancient documented biotechnological process is that of ethanol
fermentation. This involves combining malted grains with specific yeasts,
resulting in fermentation producing alcohol. A similar process of
fermentation was used to produce leavened bread during the same time period,
although the process was not fully understood until Pasteur’s research in
1857.
Developments such as vaccines and antibiotics are thought of as modern
inventions, but since around 200BC people have been consuming small amounts
of infectious materials (contained within plants and other organisms) in
order to immunise against contracting certain infectious illnesses. These
ancient forms of immunisation should also be housed under the banner of
biotechnology since by definition they were using organisms to generate
useful products (in this instance inoculative medicines).
Biotechnology has various applications within medicine, pharmacogenomics,
the production of pharmaceutical drugs, gene therapy and testing, as well as
in cloning projects. (These applications are discussed at length in the ‘biotech’ article).
Applications in agriculture include engineering crops to
produce a greater yield, making crops that are resistant to particularly
salty soil conditions, as well as improving the taste and appearance of food.
At our current stage, genetic engineering techniques are still being
perfected and work best with characteristics that can be controlled by a
single gene.
Crop yield, is an example of a characteristic that is
controlled by a multitude of genes, which means more research is required
before better-yielding crops are finally completed. Clearly this will
require more research and more time.
The development of herbicide tolerant crops has meant that weeds can be
better controlled in fields, increasing crop yield due to lessened crop
damage. This trait has been the most common to be introduced to commercially
available genetic crops, followed by resistance to insects. |
