Biotechnology scope and importance

Biotechnology Scope and Importance:-

                                                               

                                       Biotechnology has rapidly emerged as an area of activity having a marked realized as well as potential impact on virtually all domains of human welfare, ranging from food processing, protecting the environment, to human health. As a result, it now plays a very important role in employment, production and productivity, trade, economics and economy, human health, and the quality of human life throughout the world. This clearly reflected in the emergence of  numerous biotechnology companies throughout the world, including India, and the movement of noted scientists, including Nobel Laureates. to some of these companies. The total volume of trade in biotechnology products is increasing sharply every year, and it is expected to soon become the major contributor to world trade. Many commentators are confident that the 21th century will be the century of biotechnology, just as the 20th century is era of electronics.

A list of some of the important area in which biotechnology is making marked contributions:-

• Human health 
• Medicines
• Animal health
• Animal husbandry
• Dairy
• Chemicals and biochemical
• Food processing and beverages
• Crimes and parentage disputes
• Agriculture
• Forestry
• Horticulture and floriculture
• Environment
• Renewable energy and fuels
• Population control
• Mining
• Fisheries and aquaculture

Some selected contributions of biotechnology to human welfare:-

1.Medical Biotechnology:-

➢Monoclonal antibodies ( use for disease diagnosis, e.g, venereal diseases, hepatitis B and other viral diseases, cancer, etc.)                

➢DNA  probe ( used for disease diagnosis, e.g, kala-azar, sleeping sickness, malaria, etc.) 

➢Recombinant vaccines ( cleaner, safer, e.g, human hepatitis B virus, E. coli vaccines for pigs, rabies virus etc.)                                  

➢Valuable drug like human insulin, human interferon, human and  bovine growth hormones, etc.                                                               

➢Gene therapy to cure genetic disease , e.g., Huntington's chorea,  cystic fibrosis.              

➢Babies of specified sex ( artificial insemination with X or Y carrying sperms prepared by sperm separation techniques.)                

➢Identification of parents or criminals using DNA or auto-antibody   finger-printing.

2.Industrial Biotechnology:-

➢Production of useful compounds, e.g., ethanol, lactic acid, glycerin, citric acid, gluconic acid, acetone etc.                               

➢Production of antibiotics, e.g., penicillin, strepto-mycin, erythromycin, mitomycin, cycloheximide etc.                                      

➢Transformation of less use full and cheaper compounds into more useful and valuable ones, e.g., steroid hormones from sterols, sorbose from sorbitol etc.                                                                    

➢Production of enzymes, e.g., alpha-amylase, proteases, lipases etc. 

➢Single cell protein (SCP) from bacteria, yeast, fungi or algae for  human food and animal feed.                                               

➢Fuel (mainly ethanol, sometimes biogas) production from cheap,  less useful and abundant substrates, e.g., sugarcane bagasse, wood etc.                                                                   

➢Mineral extraction through leaching from low grade ores, e.g., copper, uranium etc.                                                                            
➢Immobilization of enzymes for their repeated industrial application.                                                                          

➢Protein or enzyme engineering to change the primary structure of existing proteins or enzymes to make them more efficient, change their substrate specificity, e.g., successes with T4 lysozyme, trypsin, subtilisin, lactate dehydrogenases etc.              

➢Production of immunotoxins by joining a natural toxin with a specific antibody.

3.Animal Biotechnology:-                                                                           

➢Test tube babies in human; involves in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer.

➢Hormone-induced superovulation and splitting in farm animal; involves transfer and, in many cases, in vitro fertilization.

➢Production of transgenic animals for increased milk, growth rate,  resistance to disease etc. and production of some valuable proteins in milk.

4.Environmental Biotechnology:-

➢Efficient sewage treatment, deodorization of human excreta.

➢Degradation of petroleum and management of oil spills.

➢Detoxification of wastes and industrial effluents.

➢Bio control of plant disease and insect pets by using viruses, bacteria, amoebae fungi etc.    

5.Plant Biotechnology:-

➢Embryo culture to rescue otherwise invariable hybrids, to recover haploid plants from interspecific hybrids, micro propagation of orchids etc..

➢Rapid clonal multiplication through meristem culture, e.g., of many fruit and forest trees, such as, teak.

➢Recovery of virus and other pathogen free stocks of clonal crops; meristem culture is generally combined with thermotherapy.

➢Germplasm conservation through storage in liquid nitrogen (-196'C, cryopreservation) or through slow growth.

➢Rapid isolation of homozygous lines by chromosome doubling of haploid produced through anther culture, interspecific hybridization, ovary culture.

➢Isolation of stable somaclonal variants with improved yield traits  resistance to cold, herbicides, metal toxicity, salt and other abiotic stresses.

➢Gene transfer for insect resistance, protection against viruses, herbicide resistance, storage protein improvement etc.

➢Molecular marker, e.g., RFLPs and RAPDs, for linkage mapping and mapping of quantitative trait loci.