Gevo, Butamax, and Green Biologics are producing biobutanol from yeast and bacteria. Joule Unlimited and Algenol are producing ethanol with cyanobacteria. Meanwhile, dozens of other start-ups and developmental companies are pushing forward with their own unique microbes and taking aim at the petroleum industry's stranglehold on chemical manufacturing.
It may sound new or futuristic, but industrial biotechnology has been around since humans began mass producing beer 10, years ago. It was all made possible with a species of yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which translates to "sugar fungi of beer", that is still used today. Microbes play critical roles recycling major nutrients in nature thanks to their ability to add and remove electrons to various compounds. That means fungi and bacteria can do a lot more than produce pharmaceuticals, fuels, beers, and other chemicals -- they can reduce compounds, too.
Humans have hijacked this capability to remediate environmental spills, clean sewage, mine precious metals, and much more. In fact, microbial mining is the most cost effective and sustainable way to mine low-grade copper, gold, and uranium ore and has been used for over two decades. Wisconsin is so well-known for its cheese and dairy products that lawmakers named Lactococcus lactis the official state microbe in in a 56 to 41 vote. Saccharomyces cerevisiae ran a much smoother campaign in craft beer-friendly Oregon earlier this year, where lawmakers voted 58 to 0 to make it the state microbe.
Not everything pertaining to industrial biotech and genetic engineering is controversy-free. Biotech crops were first commercialized in and ended the year planted on 1. They finished covering an area of over million hectares worldwide and a cumulative acreage of over 1.
Developing countries planted more biotech crops than industrial nations for the first time in history in So if you thought growing fold in 17 years represents an amazing pace of growth, we probably haven't seen anything yet. The European Union continues to be slow to adopt biotech crops. In only five countries in the EU planted such crops covering an area of just , hectares. By comparison, the United States planted 69,, hectares of biotech crops last year. Several varieties of important agricultural crops have been given genes from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, which produces a natural insecticide.
How was it so successful so quickly? Bt toxin is only poisonous to insects. Fish, birds, humans, and other animals do not have the receptor to which the protein binds. The overall social and environmental benefits of biotech crops cannot be ignored. In alone their use reduced CO2 emissions by They have also saved Biotech crops are just the beginning.
Oxitec is developing genetically engineered insects designed to control populations of pests that spread disease and destroy crops. A carefully calculated number of sterile insects are released into the environment, where they breed with natural insects to drastically reduce the number of offspring produced. More testing is needed, but the fate of the technology will soon rest in the hands of international governments.
Of course, we can't forget about "traditional" biotech. Nonetheless, it is by far the largest merger and acquisition in the history of the biotech industry. The immunotherapy is actually an engineered form of the virus that causes herpes, although it is no longer pathogenic. Instead, it is injected into cancer tissues, which it ruptures, while simultaneously rallying the body's own immune system.
An emerging discipline: With the world population booming, and the subsequent demand for food and fuel, intelligent agriculture and a cleaner, greener environment are just some of the key global challenges facing us today.
Biotechnology will provide you with the opportunity to enhance your research skills in using biological principles and systems to create new products, services and industries. Wide range of career prospects: Biotechnology encompasses the pharmaceutical industry, including innovations in drug and vaccine design and regenerative medicine, as well as the biofuels industry and work in carbon sequestration and next-generation fuel production.
Biotechnology will equip you with skills and knowledge that are very attractive to prospective employers.
Biotechnology makes room for everybody: A computer geek, a math nerd, a biology expert, all of them can have their concrete space in this field. A computer guy can delve into informatics in biology to say the least , while a math geek can try his hand at bio statistics.
I have seen instances where students who hate biology have taken a liking for it in the course of time. So no preconceived notions but a strong will to study would suffice. Biotechnology is used 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 potential momentous biotechnological applications of GMOs: One of the best known applications of genetic engineering is that of the creation of genetically modified organisms GMOs. 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. Treatment of genetic diseases through the use of genetic engineering : Defective genes in an organism cause genetic disorders.
For example, less than 5 months after the World Health Organization declared Zika virus a public health emergency , researchers got approval to enroll patients in trials for a DNA vaccine. While humans have been altering genes of plants and animals for millennia — first through selective breeding and more recently with molecular tools and chimeras — we are only just beginning to make changes to our own genomes amid great controversy.
For instance, if gene therapy in humans is acceptable to cure disease, where do you draw the line? Many others lie somewhere in between. How do we determine a hard limit for which gene surgery to undertake, and under what circumstances, especially given that the surgery itself comes with the risk of causing genetic damage? And what about ways that biotechnology may contribute to inequality in society? Advances in biotechnology are escalating the debate, from questions about altering life to creating it from scratch.
For example, a recently announced initiative called GP-Write has the goal of synthesizing an entire human genome from chemical building blocks within the next 10 years. The project organizers have many applications in mind, from bringing back wooly mammoths to growing human organs in pigs. But, as critics pointed out, the technology could make it possible to produce children with no biological parents , or to recreate the genome of another human, like making cellular replicas of Einstein.
In response, the organizers of GP-Write insist that they welcome a vigorous ethical debate, and have no intention of turning synthetic cells into living humans. Since virtually all of biology centers around the instructions contained in DNA, biotechnologists who hope to modify the properties of cells, plants, and animals must speak the same molecular language.
Since the publication of the complete human genome in , the cost of DNA sequencing has dropped dramatically , making it a simple and widespread research tool. Benefits: Sonia Vallabh had just graduated from law school when her mother died from a rare and fatal genetic disease. DNA sequencing showed that Sonia carried the fatal mutation as well. But far from resigning to her fate, Sonia and her husband Eric decided to fight back, and today they are graduate students at Harvard, racing to find a cure.
For example, researchers were able to track the Ebola epidemic in real time using DNA sequencing. And pharmaceutical companies are designing new anti-cancer drugs targeted to people with a specific DNA mutation. Entire new fields, such as personalized medicine , owe their existence to DNA sequencing technology.
Risks : Simply reading DNA is not harmful, but it is foundational for all of modern biotechnology. As the saying goes, knowledge is power, and the misuse of DNA information could have dire consequences. Finally, DNA testing opens the door to sticky ethical questions, such as whether to carry to term a pregnancy after the fetus is found to have a genetic mutation.
Recombinant DNA tools allow researchers to choose a protein they think may be important for health or industry, and then remove that protein from its original context. Modern biomedical research, many best-selling drugs , most of the clothes you wear , and many of the foods you eat rely on rDNA biotechnology. Benefits: Simply put, our world has been reshaped by rDNA.
An increasing number of vaccines and drugs are the direct products of rDNA. For example, nearly all insulin used in treating diabetes today is produced recombinantly. Additionally, cheese lovers may be interested to know that rDNA provides ingredients for a majority of hard cheeses produced in the West. Many important crops have been genetically modified to produce higher yields, withstand environmental stress, or grow without pesticides.
Risks : The inventors of rDNA themselves warned the public and their colleagues about the dangers of this technology. For example, they feared that rDNA derived from drug-resistant bacteria could escape from the lab, threatening the public with infectious superbugs.
And recombinant viruses, useful for introducing genes into cells in a petri dish, might instead infect the human researchers. Some of the initial fears were allayed when scientists realized that genetic modification is much trickier than initially thought, and once the realistic threats were identified — like recombinant viruses or the handling of deadly toxins — safety and regulatory measures were put in place.
Still, there are concerns that rogue scientists or bioterrorists could produce weapons with rDNA. For instance, it took researchers just 3 years to make poliovirus from scratch in , and today the same could be accomplished in a matter of weeks. Recent flu epidemics have killed over , , and the malicious release of an engineered virus could be much deadlier — especially if preventative measures, such as vaccine stockpiles, are not in place.
Synthesizing DNA has the advantage of offering total researcher control over the final product. With many of the mysteries of DNA still unsolved, some scientists believe the only way to truly understand the genome is to make one from its basic building blocks. Building DNA from scratch has traditionally been too expensive and inefficient to be very practical, but in , researchers did just that , completely synthesizing the genome of a bacteria and injecting it into a living cell.
Since then, scientists have made bigger and bigger genomes, and recently, the GP-Write project launched with the intention of tackling perhaps the ultimate goal: chemically fabricating an entire human genome.
Meeting this goal — and within a 10 year timeline — will require new technology and an explosion in manufacturing capacity. Benefits: Plummeting costs and technical advances have made the goal of total genome synthesis seem much more immediate. Scientists hope these advances, and the insights they enable, will ultimately make it easier to make custom cells to serve as medicines or even bomb-sniffing plants. Fantastical applications of DNA synthesis include human cells that are immune to all viruses or DNA-based data storage.
One company hopes to edit pig cells using DNA synthesis technology so that their organs can be transplanted into humans. And DNA is an efficient option for storing data, as researchers recently demonstrated when they stored a movie file in the genome of a cell. Risks : DNA synthesis has sparked significant controversy and ethical concerns. For example, when the GP-Write project was announced , some criticized the organizers for the troubling possibilities that synthesizing genomes could evoke, likening it to playing God.
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