Principles and Processes of Biotechnology

Modern biotechnology rests on two core techniques: genetic engineering and chemical engineering. Genetic engineering deals with altering the genetic material itself (DNA and RNA), while chemical engineering deals with maintaining the sterile conditions needed to manufacture the useful products that result -- vaccines, antibodies, enzymes, organic acids, vitamins, therapeutics, and more.

Genetic engineering is defined as the manipulation of genetic material towards a desired end, in a directed and predetermined way, using an 'in vitro' process. This manipulation can mean repairing a defective gene, replacing a defective gene with a healthy one, synthesising an entirely new gene artificially, transferring a gene into a new location or a new organism, introducing an altogether new gene, improving a living organism by manipulating its genes, combining genes from two different organisms, altering a genotype, or cloning a gene. Because of this range of activity, genetic engineering is alternatively called recombinant DNA technology or gene cloning -- the three terms are used interchangeably through the rest of this chapter. A widely used definition, given by John E. Smith (1996), describes genetic engineering as the formation of a new combination of heritable material by inserting a nucleic acid molecule -- produced by whatever means outside the cell -- into a virus, bacterial plasmid, or other vector system, so that it can be incorporated into a host organism in which it does not occur naturally, but in which it is capable of continued propagation. …