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Career Guidance: Biotechnology
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Biotechnology is a science that involves manipulation of living
organisms to get the desired results. The techniques involved in the process
have evolved parallel to and subjected by the development of other areas of
science and technology.
This course enables you to take up areas like Medical
Biotechnology, Chemical Engineering, Food and Nutrition Biotechnology, Medical
Electronics and Bioinformatics at postgraduate level. TKR College of Engineering
and Technology ( www.tkrcet.ac.in),
Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology (http://cbit.ac.in) and Gokaraju
Rangaraju Institute of Engineering and Technology ( www.gokaraju.org)
are some colleges that offer B.Tech in Biotechnology. The admission is based on
performance at EAMCET.
For details, log on to their websites. BPC students can seek
admission in this stream of engineering, provided they take the bridge course in
Mathematics offered by Board of Intermediate before the counselling (Refer The
Hindu, Andhra Pradesh edition, Dt: 06/02/2008. ICFAI Institute of Science
and Technology also offers this course. The eligibility criterion is
Intermediate with MPC and at least 60 per cent marks. For details, visit www.icfaitech.org
( Courtesy: T.Muralidharan,
http://www.thehindu.com )
Biotechnology (sometimes shortened to
"biotech") is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living
organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields
requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for
manufacturing purpose. Modern use of similar terms includes genetic engineering
as well as cell and tissue culture technologies. The concept encompasses a wide
range of procedures (and history) for modifying living organisms according to
human purposes — going back to domestication of animals, cultivation of plants,
and "improvements" to these through breeding programs that employ artificial
selection and hybridization. By comparison to biotechnology, bioengineering is
generally thought of as a related field with its emphasis more on higher systems
approaches (not necessarily altering or using biological materials directly) for
interfacing with and utilizing living things. The United Nations Convention on
Biological Diversity defines biotechnology as:
"Any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms,
or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific
use."
In other terms: "Application of scientific and technical advances in life
science to develop commercial products" is biotechnology. Biotechnology draws on
the pure biological sciences (genetics, microbiology, animal cell culture,
molecular biology, biochemistry, embryology, cell biology) and in many instances
it is also dependent on knowledge and methods from outside the sphere of biology
(chemical engineering, bioprocess engineering, information technology,
biorobotics). Conversely, modern biological sciences (including even concepts
such as molecular ecology) are intimately entwined and dependent on the methods
developed through biotechnology and what is commonly thought of as the life
sciences industry.
Biotechnology has applications in four major industrial areas, including health
care (medical), crop production and agriculture, non food (industrial) uses of
crops and other products (e.g.biodegradable
plastics, vegetable
oil, biofuels),
and environmental uses.
For example, one application of biotechnology is the directed use of organisms for
the manufacture of organic products (examples include beer and milk products).
Another example is using naturally present bacteria by
the mining industry in bioleaching.
Biotechnology is also used to recycle, treat waste, cleanup sites contaminated
by industrial activities (bioremediation),
and also to produce biological
weapons.
A series of derived terms have been coined to identify several branches of
biotechnology; for example:
-
Bioinformatics is an
interdisciplinary field which addresses biological problems using
computational techniques, and makes the rapid organization and analysis of
biological data possible. The field may also be referred to as computational
biology, and can be defined as, "conceptualizing biology in terms of
molecules and then applying informatics techniques to understand and
organize the information associated with these molecules, on a large scale."[7] Bioinformatics
plays a key role in various areas, such as functional
genomics, structural
genomics, and proteomics,
and forms a key component in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector.
-
Blue biotechnology is a
term that has been used to describe the marine and aquatic applications of
biotechnology, but its use is relatively rare.
-
Green biotechnology is
biotechnology applied to agricultural processes.
An example would be the selection and domestication of plants via micropropagation.
Another example is the designing of transgenic
plants to grow under specific
environments in the presence (or absence) of chemicals. One hope is that
green biotechnology might produce more environmentally friendly solutions
than traditional industrial
agriculture. An example of this is the engineering of a plant to express
a pesticide,
thereby ending the need of external application of pesticides. An example of
this would be Bt
corn. Whether or not green biotechnology products such as this are
ultimately more environmentally friendly is a topic of considerable debate.
-
Red biotechnology is
applied to medical processes.
Some examples are the designing of organisms to produce antibiotics,
and the engineering of genetic cures through genetic
manipulation.
-
White biotechnology, also known as industrial biotechnology, is
biotechnology applied to industrial processes.
An example is the designing of an organism to produce a useful chemical.
Another example is the using of enzymes as
industrial catalysts to
either produce valuable chemicals or destroy hazardous/polluting chemicals.
White biotechnology tends to consume less in resources than traditional
processes used to produce industrial goods.[citation
needed]
The investment and economic output of all of these types of applied
biotechnologies is termed as bioeconomy.
Medicine
In medicine, modern biotechnology finds promising applications in such areas as
Related information:
External links:
( Courtesy: Wikkipedia)
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Biotechnology and careers
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