Question

What are the main techniques that gave birth to modern biotechnology?

Answer 1

Hint: Biotechnology is the technique which makes use of living components like cells, organs, tissues, enzymes, etc., to produce a new product. The term, “Biotechnology” was coined by Karl Ereky, and he is also known to be the father of biotechnology.

Complete answer:
The development in biotechnology increases slightly by introducing new techniques such as gene manipulation, recombinant DNA technology, and molecular scissors, etc.
In the year 1970, biotechnology developed into modern biotechnology.
Genetic engineering and Chemical engineering are the two main techniques that gave birth to modern biotechnology.

> Genetic Engineering:
- Genetic engineering is the technique, where the genes (segment of DNA) and the nucleic acids are transferred from one cell to another, to alter the phenotype of the host cell.
- The tools in genetic engineering like plasmids (additional chromosomes in bacteria) and the Restriction endonucleases (molecular scissors) enhance the development in modern biotechnology.
- It provides a huge contribution to Biotechnology.

> Chemical Engineering:
- Chemical engineering helps to maintain a sterile contamination free working area to culture the desired organisms or cells in huge quantities for the manufacture of biotechnology products such as enzymes, hormones, antibodies, drugs, etc.
- This chemical engineering also helps to test new drugs in animals.
- These are the two main principles that gave birth to modern biotechnology.

Note: The term biotechnology was introduced in the year 1917 for the production of pigs. Other fields of life science such as biochemistry, molecular biology, stem cell biology, etc., also plays a major role in the development of biotechnology, but genetic engineering and chemical engineering provides its principle for modern biotechnology.