Biotechnology

• Using technology to develop products from biological organisms.

• Wine, cheese, beer, animal breeding.
• Biotechnology started with modifications of native plants into improved food
crops through artificial selection and hybridization.
• Bioengineering is the science upon which all biotechnological applications are
based.
• With the development of new approaches and modern techniques, traditional
biotechnology industries are also acquiring new horizons enabling them to
improve the quality of their products and increase the productivity of their
systems.
RED BIOTECHNOLOGY
Red Biotechnology (Biopharma) brings together all those Biotechnology uses
connected to medicine and veterinary products
Red Biotechnology includes producing vaccines and antibiotics, developing new
drugs, molecular diagnostics techniques, regenerative therapies and the
development of genetic engineering to cure diseases through genetic manipulation.
• WHITE BIOTECHNOLOGY
• White Biotechnology relates to industrial Biotech.
• White Biotechnology pays special attention to designing low resource-consuming
processes and products, making them more energy efficient and less polluting
than traditional ones.
• An example of white Biotech is the use of microorganisms in chemical production,
the design and production of new plastics/textiles and the development of new
sustainable energy sources such as bio-fuels.

• YELLOW BIOTECHNOLOGY
• Yellow Biotechnology, has been used to refer to the use of Biotechnology in food
production, for example in making wine, cheese, and beer by fermentation.
• GREY BIOTECHNOLOGY
• Grey Biotechnology refers to environmental applications, and is focused on the
maintenance of biodiversity and the removal of pollutants/contaminants using
microorganisms and plants to isolate and dispose of different substances such as
heavy metals and hydrocarbons.
• GREEN BIOTECHNOLOGY
• Green Biotechnology is focused on agriculture.
• Green Biotechnological approaches and applications include creating new plant
varieties of agricultural interest, producing biofertilizers and biopesticides.
• This area of Biotech is based exclusively on transgenics (genetic modification) i.e.
they have an extra gene or genes inserted into their DNA. The extra gene may
come from the same species or from a different species.
• One of the interesting developments is plant varieties are able to act as bio-
factories and produce substances of medical, biomedical or industrial interest in
quantities easy to be isolated and purified for example tobacco plants modified to
produce Ebola vaccine.
• BLUE BIOTECHNOLOGY
• Blue Biotechnology is based on the exploitation of marine resources to create
products and applications of industrial interest.
• Oceans of the world the sea presents the greatest biodiversity, hence, there is
potentially a huge range of sectors to benefit from the use of this kind of
Biotechnology.
• One example is the use of wound dressings coated with Chitosan (Chitosan is a
sugar that is typically derived from shrimp and crab shells).
 History
• 7000 BCE – Chinese discover fermentation through beer making..
• 6000 BCE – Yogurt and cheese made with lactic acid producing bacteria.
• 4000 BCE – Egyptians bake leavened bread using yeast.
• 500 BCE – Moldy soybean curds used as an antibiotic.
• 250 BCE – The Greeks practice crop rotation for maximum soil fertility.
• 100 CE – Chinese use chrysanthemum as a natural insecticide
• Before 20th century
• 1663 – First recorded description of living cells by Robert Hooke
• 1677 –Leeuwenhoek discovers and describes bacteria and protozoa.
• 1798 – Edward Jenner uses first viral vaccine to inoculate a child from small pox .
• 1802 – The first recorded use of the word biology.
• 1824 – Henri Dutrochet discovers that tissues are composed of living cells.
• 1838 – Protein discovered, named and recorded by Mulder and Berzilius.
• 1862 –Louis Pasteur discovers the bacterial origin of fermentation.
• 1863 – Mendel discovers the laws of inheritance.
• 1864 – Prandtl invents first centrifuge to separate cream from milk.
• 1869 – Meischer identifies DNA in the sperm of a trout.
• 1871 – Ernst Hoppe Seyler discovers invertase, which is still used for
making artificial sweeteners.
• 1877 – Robert Koch develops a technique for staining bacteria for identification.
• 1878 – Walther Flemming discovers chromatin leading to the discovery
of chromosomes.
• 1881 – Louis Pasteur develops vaccines against bacteria that cause cholera and
anthrax in chickens.
• 1885 – Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux develop the first rabies vaccine and use it
on Joseph Meister.
• 20th century
• 1919 –Ereky, a Hungarian agricultural engineer, first uses the word biotechnology.
• 1928 –Alexander Fleming notices that a certain mould could stop the duplication
of bacteria, leading to the first antibiotic, penicillin.
• 1933 – Hybrid corn is commercialized.
• 1942 – Penicillin is mass-produced in microbes for the first time.
• 1950 – The first synthetic antibiotic is created.
• 1951 – Artificial insemination of livestock is accomplished using frozen semen
• 1952 – Radushkevich and Lukyanovich publish clear images of 50 nanometer
diameter tubes made of carbon, in the Soviet Journal of Physical Chemistry.
• 1953 – Watson and Crick describe the structure of DNA.
• 1958 – The term bionics is coined by Jack E. Steele.
• 1964 – The first commercial myoelectric arm is developed by the Central
Prosthetic Research Institute of the USSR and distributed by the Hangar Limb
Factory of the UK.
• 1972 – The DNA composition of chimpanzees and gorillas is discovered to be 99%
similar to that of humans.
• 1973 – Cohen and Boyer perform the first successful recombinant DNA
experiment, using bacterial genes.
• 1974 – Scientist invent the first biocement for industrial applications.
• 1975 – Method for producing monoclonal antibodies developed
by Kohler and Milstein.
• 1978 – North Carolina scientists Hutchinson and Edgell show it is possible to
introduce specific mutations at specific sites in a DNA molecule.
• 1980 – The U.S. patent for gene cloning is awarded to Cohen and Boyer.
• 1982 – Humulin, Genentech’s human insulin drug produced by genetically
engineered bacteria for the treatment of diabetes, is the first biotech drug to be
approved by the FDA.
• 1983 – The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technique is conceived
• 1990 – First federally approved gene therapy treatment is performed successfully
on a young girl who suffered from an immune disorder.
• 1994 – The US Food and Drug Administration approves the first GM food: the
“Flavr Savr” tomato
• 1997 – British scientists, led by Ian Wilmut from the Roslin Institute, report
cloning Dolly the sheep using DNA from two adult sheep cells.
• 1999 – Discovery of the gene responsible for developing cystic fibrosis.
• 2000 – Completion of a "rough draft" of the human genome in the Human
genome project.
• 2001 – Celera Genomics and the Human Genome Project create a draft of the
human genome sequence. It is published by Science and Nature Magazine.
• 2002 – Rice becomes the first crop to have its genome decoded.
• 2003 – The Human genome project is completed, providing information on the
locations and sequence of human genes on all 46 chromosomes.
• 2008 – Japanese astronomers launch the first Medical Experiment Module called
"Kibo", to be used on the International Space station.
• 2009 – Cedars Sinai Heart Institute uses modified SAN heart genes to create the
first viral pacemaker in guinea pigs, now known as iSANs.
• 2012 – Thirty-one-year-old Zac Vawter successfully uses a nervous system
controlled bionic leg to climb the Chicage Willis tower.