Importance of Biotechnology

The term ‘Biotechnology’ is made from two different terms called Biology and Technology. The use of biological things as a technology refers to the Biotechnology. Biological things like living organisms, microorganisms, microbes, cellular components etc. used as a technology for the betterment of the human and society. This technology changes the way of human life in several different areas. Biotechnology has a wide range of branches as well as applications. The aim of biotechnology is to improve and advance the human’s living conditions. With the passage of time, this technology is growing on and resulting in numbers of helpful applications. Biotechnology has various branches further, like Green biotechnology, Blue biotechnology, Red biotechnology, White biotechnology, Bioinformatics etc. These all branches have different areas of concern and different useful technologies are invented with the help of these branches of biotechnology. There are several processes and products modified with the help of biological technology which proved very useful for human society. Research is going on with the help of this technology, with the aim of obtaining useful products and processes for improving our lifestyles. There are various surprising concepts and uses of this field in human’s life. In the upcoming paragraphs, we will discuss the important features of biotechnology in different sectors.

Importance of Biotechnology in Healthcare and Medicines

Biotechnology plays a vital role in the healthcare system. There are several uses of this technology in the making of the useful medicines and vaccines for several diseases as well as this technology also have various other medical processes which have great roles in the healthcare system. Following are some of the main important sectors of biotechnology in the health field.

• Biopharmaceutical: This is the field in which the drugs are made with the help of biotechnology for medical purposes. Mainly, the composition and formulation of these drugs are done with the life forms taken from the different microbes, microorganisms etc. With this, these drugs replace the existing ones as they are more efficient and useful as compared to existing drugs, as in bio-pharmaceutical drugs there is no use of synthetic products or chemicals. These drugs are made from only microorganisms. They meant in such a way that they directly attack the hidden mechanism of disease and improve the immune system with no side effects. Now, scientists are workings on the cure for cancer, hepatitis and other diseases like heart-related problems with the help of biopharmaceutical products.
• Pharmaco-Genomics: This field is a combination of pharmaceuticals and genomics. It is a method which helps to study the genetic information of an individual which further helps in understands the body’s response to the given drugs. The aim of this field is to generate such drugs which are suitable for the individual according to his/her genes. This process increases the chances of cure for any disease as well as decrease the processing time of drugs which is very helpful for humans.
• Gene Therapy: It is one of the techniques of biotechnology which is used for the diagnosis of the diseases like Cancer, Parkinson’s etc. The instrument which is used in this technique helps to replace or cure the unfit or infected genes of the individuals.
• Genetic Testing/Screening: This process of biotechnology is used to find out the hereditary disease of an individual; the disease which an individual gets from the genes of their parents, ancestors or sex. Moreover, this process is also used in the legal proceedings like for testifying the criminal, to find out the parents of an individual etc.

Importance of Biotechnology in Agriculture

Biotechnology plays a significant role in the agricultural sector nowadays. There are several merits of this technology in the agricultural sector. With the help of biotechnology, scientists are able to regenerate the plants, these plants are called transgenic plants, these plants carry the disease resistance traits which are very helpful for the agriculture and also increase the yield of the crop. Moreover, bio-agricultural companies play a major role in the making of biofuels like bio-oil, bio-diesel, bio-ethanol etc. Biotech enables the reproduction of plants in a new way by changing of genes with the foreign genes which develops the specific changes in the plants like a change in genes of tropical plant breeds so that it can be grown in cold weather areas. Biotech allows us to produce the pesticide-resistance crops with the help of which farmers can freely spray any pesticide over crops to kill the unwanted shrubs around the crops like weed etc. and the crops will remain harmless from these pesticides. Also, the inventions like golden rice make us grow rice over the areas where natural rice cannot grow. This will maintain the supplementation of the nutrients like vitamin-A which is essential for our eyes and prevents the various eye-related problems. The usage of gene technology for improving the colour, fragrance, size of the flower is another example of the biotechnology in the agricultural sector.

Importance of Biotechnology in Food Processing

The food industry also gets many useful things from the biotechnology. The storage of food for a long time period helps us to preserve the food and utilize it in a well-mannered way. This spoilage of food is preventing by the help of microorganisms. Furthermore, the bio-plastic is the invention of biotechnology which allows the food industry to pack the food items for a long time and protect the edible things from spoilage and maintain the nutrients of product. Also, the special chemicals are used to ripen the fruits and vegetable and make them ready for the sale. The fermentation process is very old and still used for the making of enzymes which are used in the pharmaceutical products as well as in various industrial things. With this, the fermented food is the main diet of the people in various places, the food like yoghurt, curd or cheese etc. can be made through the biotech process called fermentation. Various biotechnical techniques help the scientists to produce the transgenic crops which have essentials amino acids as staple vegetables cassava, plantain, and potato.

Importance of Biotechnology in Environment

Environmental biotechnology is used to solve the environment related problems and to make our ecosystem clean and perfect inhabit for us. It consists of environmental studies. It helps to find out the best ways in which we can make our environment clean and pollution-free. Environmental biotech helps us in such a way that we can protect our environment from hazardous wastes as well as we can make developments to make our lives more comfortable and easy in a safe environment. It enables us to convert the waste into reusable materials, in this way we do not pollute the nature for our comfort. The branches of biotechnology like genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics etc provide us with new ways to protect the earth from the ongoing environmental problems like global warming, ozone layer depletion etc. There various applications of environmental biotechnology like biomarkers, bioremediations, biotransformation, bio-energy etc which help in making the earth clean and pollution free place live. The use of bio-energy like biofuels etc emits no harmful smoke which is good for the environment as well as for our respiration system. The bioremediations are the processes in which toxic wastes are degraded to non-toxic substances. Biotechnological techniques used for environmental problems like pollution control, depletion of natural resource for non-renewable energy, restoration of degraded lands and biodiversity conservation.

Importance of Biotechnology in our Daily Life

There are various biotechnical products and processes which we use in our daily life and have various important features. Alcohol is one of the main instances of the biotechnical process. The fermentation process is used in the production of alcohol which is a biotechnical process. The household products like washing detergents are made by the enzymes which are collected from the cells. Besides this, bio-plastic which is used to pack the food products is made from the biopolymers and we cannot deny the importance of plastic in our daily life as most of the basic things which we used in our daily life are made up of plastic. Also, the fabric like polyester is kind of synthetic polymer fibre which is developed from the fossil fuels which used in making of clothes and other stuff. For the production of daily use things like dyes, tanning agents, fabrics like polyester, nylon etc, the biochemicals are used and also they are the main parts of the production. Most of the personal care products are bio-based products. The products like shampoos, body creams etc in the market nowadays are made up by biotechnical techniques so that they do not harm our skin.

From all the above mention points, we can easily draw a conclusion that biotechnology plays a vital role in the development of humankind. Biotechnology offers a wide range of applications to us and helps us a lot in different fields and sector. Besides the development, biotech is also helping us to make our environment clean. In future, we will surely see many more advantages of the biotechnology which will be very useful for us and make the living and surviving ways more easily.