Biotechnology - Its Usages and Gm Crops

Biotechnology, Its Usages and GM crops

NGUYEN Hong T.

#011400885

What is biotechnology?

Biotechnology refers to the use of living systems and organism to produce, or in specific, "any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use" (UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Art. 2) The idea of biotechnology consists of a large range of processes to modify living organisms for human purposes. Some examples are domestication of animals, cultivation of the plants, artificial selection and hybridization. Usage of biotechnology also encompasses of genetic engineering and tissue culture. Biotechnology also affects other biological sciences such as genetics, cell biology, molecular biology, etc. In the contrary, modern biological sciences are depended on the technologies and methods developed via biotechnology. In biotechnology, scientists do research in the laboratory to produce means of production such as biosynthesis, etc.

Who is involved with biotechnology?

The application of biotechnology occurs in four major industrial fields, including medical care, agriculture, industrial uses of crops and other products (for example: vegetable oil), and environmental uses.

        One example of biotechnology application is the use of organism to manufacture beer or milk products. Biotechnology can be applied in waste processing, cleaning of contaminated sites, and biological weapons.

        In medicine, biotechnology is used to discover and produce new drugs and test/screen genetic. It is possible to apply modern biotechnology to produce medicines with low price and simple procedure. For example, in 1978, Genentech developed another way to produce insulin, which is widely used to treat diabetes, without extracting from pancreas of animals. After that, they can produce vast amount of synthetic human insulin at relatively low cost.^[1] Biotechnology also allows gene therapy and the Human Genome Project, so that we now understand more about biology and diseases. This helped develop new medicines to treat previously untreatable diseases.

        In agriculture, we have genetically modified crops (“GM” crops). GM crops are plants whose DNA has been modified with genetic engineering techniques. The purpose is to produce superior species than existing ones. Examples in food crops are pest resistances, endurance in stressful environment, etc.

Genetically modified foods are foods produced from organisms who’s DNA has been altered by genetic engineering techniques. These techniques have allowed for the introduction of new crop traits as well as a far greater control over a food's genetic structure than previously afforded by methods such as selective breeding and mutation breeding.^[2] Most popular GM foods are soybean, corn, canola and cotton seed oil. GM livestock have also been experimentally developed.