Introduction

Biotechnology, broadly, means using living organisms or their enzymes to make something useful — by that definition, age-old practices like making curd, bread, or wine would count too, since they're all microbe-driven. In practice, though, the word is used more narrowly today: it refers to processes that use genetically modified organisms to achieve similar outcomes, but at industrial scale. A number of other modern techniques fall under this narrower definition as well — in vitro fertilisation (the 'test-tube baby'), synthesising and using a gene, developing a DNA vaccine, or correcting a defective gene are all considered biotechnology.

The European Federation of Biotechnology (EFB) offers a definition broad enough to cover both the traditional and the modern molecular senses of the word:

“The integration of natural science and organisms, cells, parts thereof, and molecular analogues for products and services.”