Biotechnology

6 Key excerpts on "Biotechnology"

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  eBook - ePub

  Pharmacognosy

  Fundamentals, Applications and Strategies

  • Rupika Delgoda, Simone Badal McCreath(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  [4] in the United States describes modern Biotechnology as incorporating “a specific focus on industrial usage of recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (rDNA), cell fusion, and novel bioprocessing techniques; industrial use of living organisms.”

  Biotechnology is therefore a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field, rather than a single discipline, that has given rise to a range of products and processes in life sciences. The technology has been applied to the development of new medicines, improved crop plants and animals, as well as the more efficient manufacture of everyday products. A color code was created to distinguish between the various applications. Red, green, white, and blue Biotechnology refer to applications to medicine, agriculture, industry, and marine and aquatic environments, respectively; these are further explained in later sections of the chapter.

  28.2 Biotechnology, Bioengineering, and Biomedical Engineering

  Depending on the tools and applications, there is notable overlap with biomedical engineering or bioengineering and Biotechnology [5 ,6] . Biomedical engineering or bioengineering is a rapidly growing transdisciplinary field that is regarded as the bridge between technology, medicine, and biology. In other words, the primary focus of bioengineering is the application of the principles of engineering and design concepts to medicine and biology. Harmon in 1975 defined bioengineering as the “field that uses the tools and concepts of the physical sciences to analyze biological systems” [7] . In 1997, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) published its working definition: “Bioengineering integrates physical, chemical, or mathematical sciences and engineering principles for the study of biology, medicine, behavior, or health; it advances fundamental concepts, creates knowledge form the molecular to the organ systems levels, and develops innovative biologics, materials, processes, implants, devices, and informatics approaches for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, for patient rehabilitation, and for improving health” [8] . Although NIH’s definition of bioengineering is focused on human health, which is a key component of biological engineering, bioengineering also addresses the full spectrum of life sciences, including applications to agricultural, environmental, and ecological systems [9]

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  eBook - ePub

  Biotechnology Fundamentals Third Edition

  • Firdos Alam Khan(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)
• The use of living organisms or their products to make or modify a substance. Biotechnology includes recombinant DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) techniques (genetic engineering) and hybridoma technology.
• A set of biological techniques developed through basic research and applied to research and product development.
• The use of cellular and biomolecular processes to solve problems or make useful products.
• An industrial process that involves the use of biological systems to make monoclonal antibodies and genetically engineered recombinant proteins.
• Development of 3D organs or tissues under in vitro conditions
We should not debate on which of the given definitions is true because all of them are true in their respective ways. For example, if you ask a farmer about what Biotechnology is, he or she may say, “Biotechnology is to produce high yield or pest-resistant crops.” If you pose the same question to a doctor, he or she may say, “Biotechnology is about making new vaccines and antibiotics.” If you ask the question to an engineer, he or she may say, “Biotechnology is about designing new diagnostic tools for better understanding of human diseases,” and if you ask the question to a patient suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he or she may say “Biotechnology is about stem-cell-based therapy and has tremendous capability to cure Parkinson’s disease.” All of these different definitions of Biotechnology suggest that Biotechnology has immensely impacted our daily life with arrays of products. As the field of Biotechnology keeps expanding, efforts are being made to subclassify this field into various types. The field of Biotechnology may be broadly subclassified into animal, plant, medical, industrial, and environmental Biotechnology. Nonetheless there are other emerging fields of Biotechnology, such as regenerative medicine (Figure 1.2 ), biosimilars, pharmacogenomics, bioinformatics, therapeutic proteins, forensic science, synthetic biology, bio-robotics, and biomimetics which we have separately discussed in Chapter 12