Development of Biotechnology

Biotechnology has developed by leaps and bounds over the past century, and that development is best understood as falling under two broad heads: conventional (traditional) biotechnology and modern biotechnology. Traditional biotechnology is essentially inherited kitchen craft, as old as human civilisation - fermenting food and drink using naturally occurring, unmodified microbes to make curd, cheese, idli, dosa, bread and alcoholic beverages such as beer and wine; these age-old kitchen practices only gained formal scientific validation once chemistry and microbiology advanced through the eighteenth century onward. Modern biotechnology differs in kind, not just degree, in two respects: it can deliberately alter an organism's genetic material through recombinant DNA technology, and the resulting technology raises real questions of ownership and social impact that traditional fermentation never had to answer. Today modern biotechnology underpins a genuinely global, multi-billion-dollar industry spanning pharmaceutical companies, breweries and agro-industries, and its major areas of focus include fermentation (for acids, enzymes, alcohols, antibiotics, fine chemicals, vitamins and toxins), bulk biomass and biofuel production, enzyme-based biosensors, microbial biofertilisers and nitroge …