BIOTECHNOLOGY

Definition:
Commercial techniques that use living organisms, or substances from those organisms, to make or
modify a product, including techniques used for the improvement of the characteristics of economically
important plants and animal and for the development of microorganisms to act on the environment

History of Biotechnology:
DATE EVENT
Biotechnology begins as humans began
8000 BC
domesticating food and animals
4000 BC Egyptians master the art of wine making
Egyptians and Sumerians learn brewing, cheese and
2000 BC
bread making
In China, moldy soybean curds become the first
500 BC
antibiotic to treat infections and ailments
Dutch spectacle maker Zacharias Janssen invents
1590
the microscope
1663 Robert Hooke discovers the existence of the cell
1796 Edward Jenner discovers the process of vaccination
Anselme Payen discovers and isolates diastase, the
1833
first enzyme
1838 Jons Jakob Berzelius discovers proteins
1859 Charles Darwins theory of evolution
1861 Louis Pasteur develops pasteurization
Gregor Mendel, father of modern genetics, his
1865
findings on the basic principles of heredity
1869 Friedrich Miescher identifies the existence of DNA
- Anti-rabies vaccination
1885
- Theodor Escherich observes the E.Coli
The word biotechnology is used for the first time by
1919
Karl Erkey
1928 Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
1941 A. Justin coins the term genetic engineering
James Watson and Francis Crick describe the
1953
double helix structure for DNA
Marshall Nirenberg and Har Gobind Khorana
1964
break the genetic code
Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer develop
1973
recombinant DNA
1984 Genetic fingerprinting is discovered
1990 First human gene therapy
Development of golden rice, reinforced with
1999
betacarotene
2003 Human Genome Project is completed
Kevin Eggan and Chad Cowan develop cell fusion
2005
technique that reprograms adult skin cells.
2007 First vaccine against human papillomavirus
2010 Synthia, the first synthetic cell
BIOTECHNOLOGY TRIVIA

1. There are four major areas of biotechnology study and application. These are medical, agriculture, non-food
agriculture, and environmental applications.

2. Yeast can change taste and smell of beer in hundreds of ways, it can produce 600 different compounds that
affect flavor and aroma of beer.

3. 25% of the yeast's genes can be found in human genome.

4. Each cell in your body contains about two meters of DNA. If laid end-to-end it would measure 200 billion
kilometers. That's long enough to stretch from Earth to the sun 1,333 times. To put that in perspective, it would
take 7.4 days for sunlight to travel the same distance.

5. You aren't that special. About 99.9% of your DNA is exactly the same as everyone else's. The other 0.1%
codes for all of the differences that make us unique.

6. All of the genetic information for every living organism is stored in combinations and sequences of just
four molecules -- adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. Differing sequences make up the 24,000 genes
found in the human genome.

7. Humans shares about 98% of their genes with chimpanzees, 92% with mice, 76% with zebrafish, 51% with
fruit flies, 26% with thale cress (a type of weed), and 18% with E. coli bacteria

8. Researchers have stored as much as 700 terabytes of data in a single gram of DNA, while others have produced
read-write DNA technology.

9. Fermentation is a great way to produce many other foods and chemicals.

Colors of biotechnology
Red biotechnology brings together all those biotechnology uses connected to medicine. 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 comprises all the biotechnology uses related to industrial processes - that is why it
is also called industrial biotechnology. White biotechnology pays a special attention to design low
resource-consuming processes and products, making them more energy efficient and less polluting than
traditional ones.
Grey biotechnology includes all those applications of biotechnology directly related to the environment.
These applications can be split up into two main branches: biodiversity maintenance and contaminants
removal
Green biotechnology is focused on agriculture as working field. Green biotechnological approaches and
applications include creating new plant varieties of agricultural interest, producing biofertilizers and
biopesticides, using in vitro cultivation and cloning plants.
Blue biotechnology is based on the exploitation of sea resources to create products and applications of
industrial interest. Taking into account that the sea presents the greatest biodiversity, there is potentially a
huge range of sectors to benefit from the use of this kind of biotechnology.
GENERAL FORMULAS:

EVALUATION OF MICHAELIS-MENTEN CONSTANT

INHIBITION ON ENZYME REACTIONS

Competitive Inhibition
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UNCOMPETITIVE INHIBITION
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NON-COMPETITIVE INHIBITION
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BOOK REFERENCES
Biochemical Engineering by James M. Lee
Biochemical Engineering Fundamentals by James E. Bailey & David F. Ollis
Bioprocess Engineering: Basic Concepts (2/e) by Michael L. Shuler & Fikret Kargi
Bioprocess Engineering Principles (2/e) by Pauline M. Doran