AND WHAT ABOUT BIOTECHNOLOGY

C.T. HEDREYDA NO. 1

Biotechnology is the use of microorganisms, plants, and animal, their parts, or their products, to make materials such as food, medicine, and chemicals that are useful to man.

TRADITIONAL BIOTECHNOLOGY
Biotechnology is not something new. We have been using products of biotechnology for a long time. The vinegar, soy sauce, and patis (fish sauce) in your kitchen are products of traditional biotechnology. The beer, wine, and cheese in your refrigerator are also products of biotechnology. Even your breakfast pandesal and the nata de coco in your fruit salad are products of biotechnology. Yeast is used in preparing pandesal, bacteria is needed to produce the cellulosic material that we call nata. Traditional biotechnology products include all the fermented food products we are familiar with such as Korean kimchi or microbial-based fermentation of vegetables. Yeast is used to produce our traditional coconut wine or tuba, sugarcane wine or basi , rice wine tapuy (which is sake in Japan), and even our fermented fish and meat burong isda. Yeast is a microorganism that was first used to make beer and wine as long ago as 6000 BC. Cheese made using bacteria have been produced for hundred of years. Centuries ago, people were not aware that the useful materials were products of microbial biological processes. The processes were accidentally optimized to make large quantities of products by trial and error. Early advances in science paved the way to early biotechnology products such as our conventional vaccines using live attenuated or killed microbial agents and the discovery that microorganisms produce antibiotics that could be used to treat infection caused by certain bacteria. There are also products of traditional plant and animal breeding procedures to obtain improved varieties of crops and breeds of farm animals. After years of research and recent advances in science, including advances in the field of molecular biology, scientists now know a lot more about these biological processes and the specific microorganisms involved. Scientists also discovered new techniques to improve the quality and quantity of products. As a result, the processes became cheaper, more reliable, faster, and less laborious. A series of events and discoveries paved the way for the birth of modern biotechnology.

WHAT IS MODERN BIOTECHNOLOGY?

Biotechnology, in general, is the use of living organisms to produce products useful to man. Modern biotechnology, on the other hand, attempts to make the living organism perform a specific process that results to making a specific product, in a predictable and controllable way. To be able to do this, there was a need for scientists to focus their research on the genetic information of the living cell contained in chemical messages called genes or its DNA. What a cell contains, how it appears and functions, and what processes it could perform, depend on the genetic information contained in its genes or DNA. Several genes in each cell contain the information that determines if a cell is capable of performing a process to make the useful product.

Modern biotechnology makes changes and transfers portions of the genes from one cell to another in order to improve the quality and or quantity of cell products in a process called genetic engineering.
Through extensive research, scientists now understand the chemical component of the genes, the molecules that encode an organisms genetic information. Genes were discovered to be made up of a substance called Deoxyribonucleic Acid or DNA. DNA is made up of four types of nucleotides, each type containing a different N-base, an Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, or a Guanine. DNA of different organisms are made up of exactly the same nucleotides. What is different among different types of organisms is how the four types of nucleotides are arranged or ordered in their genes. These differences DNA sequences result to their variation. Some genes are now well studied and scientists have also developed ways to change, delete, or add some messages they contain. Moreover, they have also discovered the techniques to introduce a modified or altered gene or DNA from one cell to another and from one organism to another. This procedure of changing some messages in genes and transferring them to another cell is genetic engineering. The objective of the genetic engineering procedure is to possibly make an improved cell that could produce a particular chemical, or carry out other useful processes, or give an organism a desirable characteristic that it did not posses originally.

WHAT ARE THE APPLICATIONS OF MODERN BIOTECHNOLOGY?

Human Health
Biotechnology played a significant role in the treatment of human illness ever since the discovery of the antibiotic penicillin, a chemical that kills certain disease causing bacteria and is produced by other microorganisms. However many antibiotics are not produced by naturally occurring microorganisms in the form that is most useful to man. Without modern biotechnology, there was a need to wait for rare natural mutations (natural changes in the DNA) before an antibiotic with the useful form is produced by the microorganism, which could take a long time. Another way to modify the natural antibiotic product was to use chemical synthesis techniques which are expensive and labor intensive. Now, with modern biotechnology, scientists can develop modified microorganisms that produce large quantities of antibiotics with the desired chemical structure. Some examples of pharmaceutical products now produced by modern biotechnology are : Human insulin that is used to treat human diabetes (The correct form of insulin found in humans can now be produced by genetically modified bacteria.)

Human growth hormone that is used to treat some forms of dwarfism and possess the potential to treat wounds, burns, fractures, and other conditions that heal slowly Tissue Plasminogen Activator (TPA) that is used to dissolve blood clots and so reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke Interleukins that is used to treat cancer and immune disorders Urogastrone that is used for ulcers Antihemophilic factor that is for Hemophilia A DNAse I that is for cystic fibrosis IFN- n3 that is an interferon against genital warts

Biotechnology approaches are also used to develop materials that could help detect and diagnose diseases that are inherited or diseases that are caused by microbial pathogens. Biotechnology approaches to producing new vaccines to combat diseases such as the vaccine against Hepatitis B are also being developed. Other human disease agents for which genetically engineered vaccines are being developed are: Viral Pathogenic Agents Varicella-zoster virus Dengue virus Human immunodeficiency virus Influenza A and B viruses Bacterial Pathogenic Agents Vibrio cholera Neisseria gonorrhoeae Haemophilus influenzae E. coli enterotoxin strains Clostridium tetani Mycobacterium tuberculosis Salmonella typhi Parasites Plasmodium Schistosoma mansoni Wuchereria bancrofti Disease Chicken pox Hemorrhagic fever AIDS Acute respiratory disease Diseases Cholera Gonorrhea Meningitis, septicemic conditions Diarrheal disease Tetanus Tuberculosis Typhoid fever Disease Malaria Schistosomiasis Filariasis

Plant and Animal Agriculture

Genetic engineering of plants have been able to adjust nutritional content of plants, to produce disease-resistant, herbicide resistant, saline resistant, and drought resistant crops. In general, modern biotechnology address problems in the quality and quantity of food production.

Examples of genetically improved crops : Insect resistant corn Herbicide tolerant soybean Insect resistant cotton Improved (delayed ripening) papaya Golden rice (with Vitamin A ) Modern biotechnology approaches are also used to help animal farmers and consumers. Genetically engineered animal vaccines and animal growth hormones are produced to improve yield and quality of animal products. Biotechnology approaches are developed for early and accurate diagnosis of diseases of livestock, poultry, and aquaculture.

Waste Management
Today, there are two major problems in waste management. First, how and where do we dispose the large quantities of waste that are continually being produced everyday? Second, how are we going to remove the toxic substances that have accumulated in our dump sites, soil, and water systems over several years? Sewage processing plants use microbes to feed on different types of solid waste materials. Scientist are trying to test a number of biotechnology strategies to deal with the large-scale wastes and toxic substances in our ecosystem. Studies on bioremediation, a process of using microorganisms to remove toxic wastes from the environment, have been and are currently being conducted in different research laboratories in the world. As a result, genetically engineered bacteria have been developed which help in degrading different forms of pollution such as pesticides, herbicides, and other poisonous chemicals.

Synthesis of Commercial Products

Modern biotechnology techniques can be used to improve the production of many compounds such as proteins, vitamins, amino acids, antibiotics, dyes, and precursors of other biopolymers. In addition to using bacteria as factories for the production of proteins including commercially important enzymes, microorganisms have been genetically engineered to facilitate the development of new and more efficient biosynthetic pathways for the production of these important compounds. The main strategy is to insert into the microbial cell a gene that codes for an enzyme that is not originally synthesized by the microbe. The new enzyme creates a new pathway that allows the production of a new compound. The other possibility is that the new enzyme augments and improves an already existing pathway to increase or improve rate of production of the compound.

Forensic Science
Investigation of biological samples derived from scenes of crime could now employ a methodology which analyzes small sections of the genes or DNA which were observed from previous studies to possess sufficient variability to be able to distinguish between individuals in the population. The available DNA analysis technology allows for results to be rapidly and accurately obtained from very small amounts of cellular material.