Applications of Biotechnology.

1. Applications of Biotechnology

3. What is Biotechnology
• Biotechnology applies the knowledge of biology to enhance and
improve the environment, health, and food supply.
• Using biotechnology, scientists work to develop environment friendly
alternatives to fossil fuels and plastics; new medicines, vaccines and
disease diagnostic tools; and higher yielding and more nutrient-rich
crop plants.

4. Applications of biotechnology
• In the coming years, most of the commercial application of biotechnology will be
in three markets

5. The Applications of Biotechnology
Medical Biotechnology
• Diagnostics
• Therapeutics
• Vaccines
Agricultural Biotechnology
Plant agriculture
Animal agriculture
Food processing
Environmental Biotechnology
Cleaning through bioremediation
Preventing environmental problems
Monitoring the environment

6. Diagnostics
• Physicians can now detect many diseases and medical conditions more quickly
and with greater accuracy.
• The time required to diagnose infectious diseases has dropped from days to
minutes.
• Certain cancers are now diagnosed by simple taking a blood sample, thus
eliminating the need for invasive and costly surgery.

7. Biomarkers
• Molecular footprints that are secreted by cells as the disease progresses from one
stage to the next are known as “Biomarkers”.
• Biotechnology has also decreased the cost of disease diagnosis.
• A new blood test, developed through biotechnology, measures the amount of low
density lipoprotein in blood.

8. Medical Biotechnology
• Forensics
• DNA fingerprinting allows for the identification of individuals by analyzing
section of DNA that vary widely from one individual to another

9. Therapeutics
• Biotechnology will provide improved versions of today’s therapeutic regimens.
• The novel therapeutic advances biotechnology now makes following things
feasible:
• Gene therapy to correct genetic disease
• Immunosuppressive therapies
• Cell therapy to produce replacement tissues and organs
• Replacement therapies

10. Therapeutics
Cancer Therapy to suppress tumor genes and prevent or cure cancer
• Design and production of vaccines
• Vaccine delivery systems (goats that produce milk with a malaria antigen in it)

11. Natural Products as Pharmaceuticals
• Many plants produce compounds with human therapeutic value.
• For example: Digitalis
• Bark of the slow-growing yew tree

12. Gene Therapy
• It is a technique for correcting defective genes that are responsible for disease
development
• There are four approaches:
1. A normal gene inserted to compensate for a nonfunctional gene.
2. An abnormal gene traded for a normal gene
3. An abnormal gene repaired through selective reverse mutation
4. Change the regulation of gene pairs

13. How It Works
• A vector delivers the therapeutic gene into a patient’s target cell
• The target cells become infected with the viral vector
• The vector’s genetic material is inserted into the target cell
• Functional proteins are created from the therapeutic gene causing the cell to return
to a normal state

15. Cancer Therapies
• Biotechnology research tools have permitted progress in treating cancer on a
variety of fronts.

16. How it works
• MAbs are being used to bind to and inactivates the protein produced by the genes
that are involved in certain critical events of cell growth.
• When both copies of Tumor suppressor genes become inactive then by introducing
normal copies of the genes into tumor cells through gene therapy made the tumor
to be regress.

17. Vaccine

18. Vaccination design and production

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• If you are exposed to that microbe again, your body has a ready supply of
antibodies to defend itself.
• Generally vaccines cause no serious problems, but they do have side effects, like :
• Allergic reactions
• Aches or pains
• Fever

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1. A second problem with this method of vaccination is consistent production of
virus based vaccines.
2. Developing vaccinations for some deadly infectious diseases, such as
HIV/AIDS
• Usually, only one or a few proteins on the surface of pathogen trigger the
production of antibodies.
• By isolating the gene and inserting into E.coli, large quantity of proteins can be
produced to serve as vaccine.

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• When protein is injected the body produces antibodies that can recognize the
pathogen .
• Using these new techniques of biotechnology, scientists have developed vaccines
against diseases such as Hepatitis Injecting naked DNA into muscles or skin cells
also elicits immune response.
• Researchers had assumed that DNA alone would not trigger an immune response
of sufficient strength to impart protection against infectious diseases.

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• Vaccine being developed is a Live Virus, a coat protein or a piece of its DNA, the
production of vaccines require costly facilities and procedures
• Industrial researchers are using biotechnology to develop edible vaccines.
• A company has genetically engineered goats to produce a malaria antigen in milk.
• Positive results shown for human volunteers who consumed hepatitis vaccines in
bananas and cholera vaccines in potatoes.

23. • Agriculture Biotechnology
• Plant Agriculture
• Crop Production and Protection
• Using Biological Methods to Protect Crops
• Value of crops

24. Agricultural biotechnology
• Modern agricultural biotechnology includes a range of tools that scientists employ
to understand and manipulate the genetic make-up of organisms for use in the
production of agricultural products.

25. Applications
• Micro-organisms have been used for decades as living factories for the production
of life-saving antibiotics including penicillin, from the fungus
• Penicillium, and streptomycin from the bacterium Streptomyces.
• Modern detergents rely on enzymes produced via biotechnology, hard cheese
production largely relies on rennet produced by biotech yeast and human insulin
for diabetics is now produced using biotechnology.

26. Plant agriculture
• As plants are genetically complex, plant agriculture biotechnology lagged behind
medical advances in biotechnology.
• An Important fact is that animal research has received much more federal funding
than plant research.

27. Using biological methods to protect crops
• Biotechnology is also providing farmers with more opportunities to work with
nature in plant agriculture.
• Scientists have discovered that plants and animals have endogenous defense
systems, the hypersensitive response and systemic acquired resistance.
• Scientists are developing environmentally benign chemicals that can be used to
trigger these two means of defense so that plants can better protect themselves
against attack by insects and pathogens.

28. Biological control or Biocontrol
• It is suppression of pests and diseases through the use of biological agents.
• For example, a virus may be used to control an insect pest, or a fungus may deter
the growth of a weed.

29. Exploiting cooperative relationships in nature
• In addition to capitalizing on nature’s negative interactions---predation and
parasitism--- to control pests, farmers might also use existing positive
relationships that are important for plant growth.
• For Example-symbiosis between plants in the bean family and certain nitrogen-
fixing bacteria.
• By providing crop plant with a usable form of nitrogen, the bacteria encourage
plant growth.
• Scientists are working to understand the genetic basis of this symbiotic
relationship so that we can give nitrogen-fixing capabilities to crops other than
legumes.

30. Nutritional value of crops
• The first generation of genetically engineered crops primarily benefited farmers as well as
consumers.
• For example:- Bt Corn sustains relatively little insect damage, it is also infected significantly
less often by fungi and molds that produce toxins that are fatal to livestock and harmful to
humans.
• Biotechnology also provide consumers with plant products that are designed specifically to be
healthier and nutritious.
• Healthier cooking oils are being developed.
• Using genetic engineering plant scientists have decreased the concentrations of saturated fatty
acids in certain vegetable oils.