As a biotechnologist, I must have faith in my career and academic field. However, I don’t advertise about biotech just because I’m active in it, I do believe that the future of humanity in lots of fields is dependent on this area. The increase in the earth’s population and the need for food, medicine, and better life quality can be solved through biotechnology.
What is Biotechnology?
The concept of biotechnology varies among different researchers. In conventional definition, biotechnology is the science of producing biological material using living organisms. Some define biotechnology as a field in which modern technologies are integrated to understand living organisms with the purpose of their manipulation. In the modern approach, most projects in biotechnology are related to genes and genetic engineering for increasing the productivity of biological systems. It is interesting to mention the concept of biotechnology was used by Károly Ereky in 1919 for the first time [1] Since then, the concept has evolved so much that resulted in a multibillion-dollar market for biotechnology in the world.
Today, biotechnology is not limited to a specific field and different branches of it have been formed, including:
- Medical Biotechnology
- Animal Biotechnology
- Plant Biotechnology
- Industrial Biotechnology
- Environmental Biotechnology
This field is a game-changing
Given that the biological sciences in various fields are directly related to human life, there is a great need for progress in this area. The occurrence of various diseases causes high demand for new drugs and vaccines. The growing population of the Earth is a great issue because we need alternative methods of providing food. Another issue is environmental pollution and the need to control them to maintain the quality of life on Earth. The answer to all these problems relies on biotechnology. With biotechnological techniques, human lifestyles can be improved and we can move towards a better future.
Today we have techniques (i.e., CRISPR/Cas systems) that can target genes with maximum accuracy. This capability enables us to come up with newer treatments for incurable diseases. We can produce agricultural products that can survive in harsh environmental conditions. A major concern about transgenic products is their side effects. This can be solved when using advanced techniques because we can control situations much better than in the past.
By developing newer strategies for recombinant protein production, we can produce our desired biological products (i.e., recombinant drugs, enzymes, etc.) in a variety of cells with maximum efficiency. Additionally, We can make changes in the development of newer vaccines. Therefore, society can be better prepared to deal with upcoming pandemics.
In general, we can say biotechnology is a science for optimizing the biological aspects of human life. This will both improve the quality of human life and create significant wealth for researchers in this field. For this, I believe that biotechnology is a game-changing field.
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