Biotechnology : Introduction , Scope and Applications of Biotechnology

Abstract

Introduction: Biotechnology is defined as the ‘application of scientific and engineering principles to the processing of material by biological agents to provide goods and services’. The Spinks Report (1980) defined biotechnology as ‘the application of biological organisms, systems or processes to the manufacturing and service industries’. United States Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment defined biotechnology as ‘any technique that used living organisms to make or modify a product, to improve plants or animals or to develop microorganisms for specific uses’. The document focuses on the development and application of modern biotechnology based on new enabling techniques of recombinant-DNA technology, often referred to as genetic engineering. The history of biotechnology begins with zymotechnology, which commenced with a focus on brewing techniques for beer. By World War I, however, zymotechnology would expand to tackle larger industrial issues, and the potential of industrial fermentation gave rise to biotechnology. The oldest biotechnological processes are found in microbial fermentations, as born out by a Babylonian tablet circa 6000 B.C. unearthed in 1881 and explaining the preparation of beer.