What is Biotechnology? Biotechnology Explained!!!

 Biotechnology 

     Merriam-Webster dictionary defines Biotechnology as "the manipulation (as through genetic engineering) of living organisms or their components to produce useful usually commercial products (such as pest resistant crops, new bacterial strains, or novel pharmaceuticals)"

     In simple words Biotechnology is a technology that makes use of biological systems, living organism or parts of this for creating different products which are useful.

    The word Biotechnology is coined by adding two words, Bio (means life ) and technology. Biotechnology is a wider concept having many branches but all the branches utilizes living organisms to achieve their desired results. Biotechnology has been used by humans since ages when the early ancestors of man who started to domesticate the animals, cultivation of plants and advancement in them by hybridization.

     The main areas on which biotechnology focuses are medical sciences and agriculture. With the help of biotechnology, farmers are getting great results from their harvest as they have learned to alter with the genetics of their animals and crops and have created such species which can survive in extreme climates. The earliest applications of  biotechnology also includes fermentation of different food items including beer, pickles and cheese. The use of yeast for making bread and many other items led to Louis Pasteur's work in 1857 which led to better understanding of microbial life and development of antibiotics.

Biotechnology is divided into various branches which are as follows:-

• Red Biotechnology

       This branch includes study of medical and health processes such as production of antibiotics and changing of genetical cures by genetic manipulation.

• Blue Biotechnology

This branch includes study of marine and aquatic animals.

• Green Biotechnology

      This branch includes study of agricultural processes such as study related to creation of a new plant or crop species which are resistant to extreme climates and pests and yield better harvest

• White Biotechnology

      White Biotechnology also known as Industrial Biotechnology which is concerned with designing of certain organisms that produce specific chemicals that can be used for industrial purposes such as environmentally safe cleansing agents or such chemicals that can wholly breakdown hazardous and harmful chemicals and pollutants.

• Bioinformatics

     This branch includes focusing on biology in terms of molecules and then understanding and organizing information on a large scale. The application of this branch is going through biological problems through computational techniques, making rapid organization of large quantities of biological data and producing analysis for the data.