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AND WHAT ABOUT BIOTECHNOLOGY

NO. 1

Biotechnology is the use of microorganisms, plants, and animal, their parts, or


their products, to make materials such as food, medicine, and chemicals that are
useful to man.

TRADITIONAL BIOTECHNOLOGY
Biotechnology is not something new. We have been using products of biotechnology for a
long time. The vinegar, soy sauce, and patis (fish sauce) in your kitchen are products of
traditional biotechnology. The beer, wine, and cheese in your refrigerator are also
products of biotechnology. Even your breakfast pandesal and the nata de coco in your
fruit salad are products of biotechnology. Yeast is used in preparing pandesal, bacteria is
needed to produce the cellulosic material that we call nata. Traditional biotechnology
products include all the fermented food products we are familiar with such as kimchi or
microbial-based fermentation of vegetables. Yeast is used to produce our traditional
coconut wine or tuba, sugarcane wine or basi , rice wine tapuy (which is sake in
Japan). Yeast is a microorganism that was first used to make beer and wine as long ago
as 6000 BC. Cheese made using bacteria have been produced for hundred of years.
Centuries ago, people were not aware that the useful materials were products of microbial
biological processes. The processes were accidentally optimized to make large quantities
of products by trial and error.
Early advances in science paved the way to early biotechnology products such as our
conventional vaccines using live attenuated or killed microbial agents. The discovery that
microorganisms produce antibiotics that could be used to treat infection caused by certain
bacteria is a significant contribution to medicine. There are also products of traditional
plant and animal breeding procedures to obtain improved varieties of crops and breeds of
farm animals.
After years of research and recent advances in science, including advances in the field of
molecular biology, scientists now know a lot more about these biological processes and
the specific microorganisms involved. Scientists also discovered new techniques to
improve the quality and quantity of products. As a result, the processes became cheaper,
more reliable, faster, and less laborious. A series of events and discoveries paved the
way for the birth of modern biotechnology.

WHAT IS MODERN BIOTECHNOLOGY?


Biotechnology, in general, is the use of living organisms to produce products useful to man.
Modern biotechnology, on the other hand, attempts to make the living organism perform a
specific process that results to making a specific product, in a predictable and controllable way.
To be able to do this, there was a need for scientists to focus their research on the genetic
information of the living cell contained in chemical messages called genes or its DNA. What a
cell contains, how it appears and functions, and what processes it could perform, depend on the
genetic information contained in its genes or DNA. Several genes in each cell contain the
information that determines if a cell is capable of performing a process to make the useful
product.

Modern biotechnology makes changes and transfers portions of the genes from
one cell to another in order to improve the quality and or quantity of cell products
in a process called genetic engineering.
Through extensive research, scientists now understand the chemical component of the genes, the
molecules that encode an organisms genetic information. Genes were discovered to be made up
of a substance called Deoxyribonucleic Acid or DNA. DNA is made up of four types of
nucleotides, each type containing a different N-base, an Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, or a
Guanine. DNA of different organisms are made up of exactly the same nucleotides. What is
different among different types of organisms is how the four types of nucleotides are arranged or
ordered in their genes. These differences DNA sequences result to their variation.
Some genes are now well studied and scientists have also developed ways to change, delete, or
add some messages they contain. Moreover, they have also discovered the techniques to
introduce a modified or altered gene or DNA from one cell to another and from one organism to
another. This procedure of changing some messages in genes and transferring them to another
cell is genetic engineering. The objective of the genetic engineering procedure is to possibly
make an improved cell that could produce a particular chemical, or carry out other useful
processes, or give an organism a desirable characteristic that it did not posses originally.

WHAT ARE THE APPLICATIONS OF MODERN BIOTECHNOLOGY?


Human Health
Biotechnology played a significant role in the treatment of human illness ever since the discovery
of the antibiotic penicillin, a chemical that kills certain disease causing bacteria and is produced by
other microorganisms. However many antibiotics are not produced by naturally occurring
microorganisms in the form that is most useful to man. Without modern biotechnology, there was
a need to wait for rare natural mutations (natural changes in the DNA) before an antibiotic with the
useful form is produced by the microorganism, which could take a long time. Another way to
modify the natural antibiotic product was to use chemical synthesis techniques which are
expensive and labor intensive. Now, with modern biotechnology, scientists can develop modified
microorganisms that produce large quantities of antibiotics with the desired chemical structure.
Some examples of pharmaceutical products now produced by modern biotechnology are :

Human insulin that is used to treat human diabetes (The correct form of insulin found in
humans can now be produced by genetically modified bacteria.)

Human growth hormone that is used to treat some forms of dwarfism and possess the
potential to treat wounds, burns, fractures, and other conditions that heal slowly

Tissue Plasminogen Activator (TPA) that is used to dissolve blood clots and so reduce the
risk of heart attack or stroke

Interleukins that is used to treat cancer and immune disorders

Urogastrone that is used for ulcers

Antihemophilic factor that is for Hemophilia A

DNAse I that is for cystic fibrosis

IFN- n3 that is an interferon against genital warts

Biotechnology approaches are also used to develop materials that could help detect and diagnose
diseases that are inherited or diseases that are caused by microbial pathogens.
Biotechnology approaches to producing new vaccines to combat diseases such as the vaccine
against Hepatitis B are also being developed. Other human disease agents for which genetically
engineered vaccines are being developed are:
Viral Pathogenic Agents
Varicella-zoster virus
Dengue virus
Human immunodeficiency virus
Influenza A and B viruses

Disease
Chicken pox
Hemorrhagic fever
AIDS
Acute respiratory disease

Bacterial Pathogenic Agents


Vibrio cholera
Neisseria gonorrhoeae
Haemophilus influenzae
E. coli enterotoxin strains
Clostridium tetani
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Salmonella typhi

Diseases
Cholera
Gonorrhea
Meningitis, septicemic conditions
Diarrheal disease
Tetanus
Tuberculosis
Typhoid fever

Parasites
Plasmodium
Schistosoma mansoni
Wuchereria bancrofti

Disease
Malaria
Schistosomiasis
Filariasis

Plant and Animal Agriculture


Genetic engineering of plants have been able to adjust nutritional content of plants, to produce
disease-resistant, herbicide resistant, saline resistant, and drought resistant crops. In general,
modern biotechnology addresses problems in the quality and quantity of food production.

Examples of genetically improved crops :


Insect resistant corn
Herbicide tolerant soybean
Insect resistant cotton
Improved (delayed ripening) papaya
Golden rice (with Vitamin A )
Modern biotechnology approaches are also used to help animal farmers and consumers.
Genetically engineered animal vaccines and animal growth hormones are produced to improve
yield and quality of animal products.
Biotechnology approaches are developed for early and accurate diagnosis of diseases of
livestock, poultry, and aquaculture.

Waste Management
Today, there are two major problems in waste management. First, how and where do we dispose
the large quantities of waste that are continually being produced everyday? Second, how are we
going to remove the toxic substances that have accumulated in our dump sites, soil, and water
systems over several years?
Sewage processing plants use microbes to feed on different types of solid waste materials.
Scientist are trying to test a number of biotechnology strategies to deal with the large-scale
wastes and toxic substances in our ecosystem. Studies on bioremediation, a process of using
microorganisms to remove toxic wastes from the environment, have been and are currently being
conducted in different research laboratories in the world. As a result, genetically engineered
bacteria have been developed which help in degrading different forms of pollution such as
pesticides, herbicides, and other poisonous chemicals.

Synthesis of Commercial Products


Modern biotechnology techniques can be used to improve the production of many compounds
such as proteins, vitamins, amino acids, antibiotics, dyes, and precursors of other biopolymers. In
addition to using bacteria as factories for the production of proteins including commercially
important enzymes, microorganisms have been genetically engineered to facilitate the
development of new and more efficient biosynthetic pathways for the production of these
important compounds. The main strategy is to insert into the microbial cell a gene that codes for
an enzyme that is not originally synthesized by the microbe. The new enzyme creates a new
pathway that allows the production of a new compound. The other possibility is that the new
enzyme augments and improves an already existing pathway to increase or improve rate of
production of the compound.

Forensic Science
Investigation of biological samples derived from scenes of crime could now employ a
methodology which analyzes small sections of the genes or DNA which were observed from
previous studies to possess sufficient variability to be able to distinguish between individuals in
the population. The available DNA analysis technology allows for results to be rapidly and
accurately obtained from very small amounts of cellular material.

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