This document provides an overview of biotechnology, including its definitions, history, techniques, and applications. It discusses how biotechnology has evolved from ancient uses of microbes in fermentation to modern applications of genetic engineering. Key areas of biotechnology addressed include medicine, agriculture, forestry, and environmental management. The document also examines some societal and ethical issues raised by biotechnology developments.

1. Biotechnology: An Overview

2. 1. What is Biotechnology?
•Definitions of Biotechnology
•Timeline of Biotechnology
•Techniques used in Biotechnology
•Who's Who in Biotechnology
2. How is Biotechnology being used?
•Applications of Biotechnology
•Medicines on the market today
•Agriculture - GM Foods and Animals
•DNA fingerprinting and forensic science
•Gene Therapy and Transgenic Animals
•Human Embryonic Stem Cells and Cloning
3. What are some of the societal issues Biotechnology
raises?
•Bioethics / "Genethics"
•Public attitudes to biotechnology - safety, awareness
•Therapeutic uses of human genes and tissues
Overview

3. What is biotechnology?
• Biotechnology = bios (life) + logos (study of or essence)
– Literally ‘the study of tools from living things’
• CLASSIC: The word "biotechnology" was first used in 1917
to describe processes using living organisms to make a
product or run a process, such as industrial fermentations.
(Robert Bud, The Uses of Life: A History of Biotechnology)
• LAYMAN: Biotechnology began when humans began to
plant their own crops, domesticate animals, ferment juice
into wine, make cheese, and leaven bread
(AccesExcellence)

4. What is biotechnology?
• GENENTECH: Biotechnology is the process of
harnessing 'nature's own' biochemical tools to make
possible new products and processes and provide
solutions to society's ills (G. Kirk Raab, Former
President and CEO of Genentech)
• WEBSTER’S: The aspect of technology concerned
with the application of living organisms to meet the
needs and ends of man.
• WALL STREET: Biotechnology is the application of
genetic engineering and DNA technology to produce
therapeutic and medical diagnostic products and
processes. Biotech companies have one thing in
common - the use of genetic engineering and
manipulation of organisms at a molecular level.

5. What is biotechnology?
• Using scientific methods with organisms to produce
new products or new forms of organisms
• Any technique that uses living organisms or
substances from those organisms or substances from
those organisms to make or modify a product, to
improve plants or animals, or to develop
microorganisms for specific uses

6. What is biotechnology?
• Biotechnology is a multidisciplinarian in nature,
involving input from
• Engineering
• Computer Science
• Cell and Molecular Biology
• Microbiology
• Genetics
• Physiology
• Biochemistry
• Immunology
• Virology
• Recombinant DNA Technology  Genetic manipulation
of bacteria, viruses, fungi, plants and animals, often for
the development of specific products

7. What are the stages of biotechnology?
• Ancient Biotechnology
• early history as related to food and shelter,
including domestication
• Classical Biotechnology
• built on ancient biotechnology
• fermentation promoted food production
• medicine
• Modern Biotechnology
• manipulates genetic information in organism
• genetic engineering

8. Ancient biotechnology
• Paleolithic society – Hunter-gatherers  Nomadic
lifestyle due to migratory animals and edible plant
distribution (wild wheat and barley) (~2 x 106 yrs.)
• Followed by domestication of plants and animals
(artificial selection)  People settled, sedentary
lifestyles evolved (~10,000 yrs. ago)
• Cultivation of wheat, barley and rye (seed
collections)
• Sheep and goats  milk, cheese, button and
meat
• Grinding stones for food preparation
• New technology  Origins of Biotechnology 
Agrarian Societies
History of domestication and agriculture

9. • Long history of fermented foods since people
began to settle (9000 BC) (fervere –to boil)
• Often discovered by accident!
• Improved flavor and texture
• Deliberate contamination with bacteria or
fungi (molds)
• Examples:
•Bread
•Yogurt
•Sour cream
•Cheese
•Wine
•Beer
•Sauerkraut
Ancient biotechnology
Fermented foods and beverages

10. • Dough not baked immediately would undergo
spontaneous fermentation  would rise 
Eureka!!
• Uncooked fermented dough could be used to
ferment a new batch  no longer reliant on
“chance fermentation”
• 1866 – Louis Pasteur published his findings on
the direct link between yeast and sugars  CO2 +
ethanol (anaerobic process)
• 1915 – Production of baker’s yeast –
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Ancient biotechnology
Fermented foods and beverages

11. •Different types of beer
•Vinegar
•Glycerol
•Acetone
•Butanol
•Lactic acid
•Citric acid
•Antibiotics – WWII (Bioreactor developed for large
scale production, e.g. penicilin made by fermentation
of penicillium)
•Today many different antibiotics are produced by
microorganisms
•Cephalosporins, bacitracin, neomycin,
tetracycline……..)
Classical biotechnology
Industry today exploits early discoveries of the fermentation
process for production of huge numbers of products

12. • Substrate  + Microbial Enzyme  Product
• Examples:
• Cholesterol  Steroids (cortisone, estrogen,
progesterone) (hydroxylation reaction  -OH
group added to cholesterol ring)
Classical biotechnology
Chemical transformations to produce therapeutic
products

13. • Amino acids to improve food taste, quality or
preservation
• Enzymes (cellulase, collagenase, diastase,
glucose isomerase, invertase, lipase, pectinase,
protease)
• Vitamins
• Pigments
Classical biotechnology
Microbial synthesis of other commercially valuable
products

14. • Cell biology
• Structure, organization and reproduction
• Biochemistry
• Synthesis of organic compounds
• Cell extracts for fermentation (enzymes
versus whole cells)
• Genetics
• Resurrection of Gregor Mendel’s findings  1866 
1900s
• Theory of Inheritance (ratios dependent on traits of
parents)
• Theory of Transmission factors
• W.H. Sutton – 1902
• Chromosomes = inheritance factors
• T.H. Morgan – Drosophila melanogaster
Modern biotechnology

15. Molecular Biology
• Beadle and Tatum (Neurospora crassa)
• One gene, one enzyme hypothesis
• Charles Yanofsky  colinearity
between mutations in genes and amino
acid sequence (E. coli)
• Genes determine structure of proteins
• Hershey and Chase – 1952
• T2 bacteriophage – 32P DNA, not 35S protein
is the material that encodes genetic
information
Modern biotechnology

16. • Watson, Crick, Franklin and Wilkins (1953)
• X-ray crystallography
• 1962 – Nobel Prize awarded to three men
• Chargaff – DNA base ratios
• Structural model of DNA developed
• DNA Revolution – Promise and Controversy!!!
• Scientific foundation of modern biotechnology
• based on knowledge of DNA, its replication,
repair and use of enzymes to carry out in vitro
splicing DNA fragments
Modern biotechnology

17. • Breaking the Genetic Code – Finding the Central
Dogma
• An “RNA Club” organized by George Gamow (1954)
assembled to determine the role of RNA in protein
synthesis
• Vernon Ingram’s research on sickle cell anemia (1956)
tied together inheritable diseases with protein structure
• Link made between amino acids and DNA
• Radioactive tagging experiments demonstrate
intermediate between DNA and protein = RNA
• RNA movement tracked from nucleus to cytoplasm  site of
protein synthesis
Modern biotechnology

18. • DNA  RNA  Protein
Transcription Translation
Genetic code determined for all 20 amino acids by
Marshal Nirenberg and Heinrich Matthaei and Gobind
Khorana – Nobel Prize – 1968
• 3 base sequence = codon
Modern biotechnology

19. What are the areas of biotechnology?
• Organismic biotechnology
• uses intact organisms and does not alter genetic
material
• Molecular Biotechnology
• alters genetic makeup to achieve specific goals
Transgenic organism: an organism with artificially
altered genetic material

20. What are the benefits of
biotechnology?
• Medicine
• human
• veterinary
• biopharming
• Environment
• Agriculture
• Food products
• Industry and manufacturing

21. What are the applications of biotechnology?
• Production of new and improved crops/foods,
industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals and livestock
• Diagnostics for detecting genetic diseases
• Gene therapy (e.g. ADA, CF)
• Vaccine development (recombinant vaccines)
• Environmental restoration
• Protection of endangered species
• Conservation biology
• Bioremediation
• Forensic applications
• Food processing (cheese, beer)

22. Monoclonal
Antibodies
Molecular
Biology
Cell
Culture
Genetic
Engineering
Anti-cancer drugs
Diagnostics
Culture of plants
from single cells
Transfer of new
genes into animal
organisms
Synthesis of
specific DNA
probes
Localisation of
genetic disorders
Tracers
Cloning
Gene therapy
Mass prodn. of
human proteins
Resource bank
for rare human
chemicals
Synthesis
of new
proteins
New
antibiotics
New types of
plants and
animals
New types
of food
DNA
technology
Crime solving
Banks of
DNA, RNA
and proteins
Complete
map of the
human
genome