Essay Outline on Biotechnology

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Biotechnology

Biotechnology may be defined as the use of microorganisms, animal or plant cells or their components to generate products and services useful to human beings. It is the multidisciplinary field including botany, zoology, microbiology, molecular biology, genetics, chemical and process engineering.

Recombinant DNA technology is one of the most important tool of biotechnology and is utilized in the production of Genetically Modified (GM) foods. GMs are produced from genetically modified organisms (GMO) which have had their genome altered through genetic engineering techniques.

The general principle of producing a GMO is to insert DNA that has been taken from another organism and modified in the laboratory into an organism's genome to produce both new and useful traits or phenotypes. Typically this is done using DNA from certain types of bacteria. The process of genetic engineering is known by many different names such as gene, or DNA manipulation, gene splicing, transgenics and many others. However the underlying processes all have the same aim and that is to isolate single genes of a known function from one organism and transfer a copy of that gene to a new host to introduce a desirable characteristic. Common vectors in gene transfer between plants are Agrobacterium tumefaciens and Agrobacterium rhizogenes. These bacteria are usually found in the soil and if they infect plants will respectively cause galls or hairy roots through introducing some of their own DNA into the plant. The Agrobacterium transfer the DNA as a plasmid, a small circular piece of DNA, which is separate to the main bacterial chromosome. Genetic engineering makes use of this natural transfer of DNA through replacing a section of the bacteria's own DNA with a gene which scientists would like to introduce to a new host.
The technique of recombinant DNA technology was developed in 1970, which is a part of genetic engineering. Transgenic microorganisms are produced to obtain pharmaceutical proteins. For example, human insulin is being commercially produced from a transgenic Escherichia coli strain. This strain contains and expresses the human insulin gene. Proteins produced by transgenic cells/organisms are called recombinant proteins. Recombinant proteins are produced only by the specific transgenes that are introduced into them.

Gene transfer methods in plants
For achieving genetic transformation in plants, the basic pre-requisite is the construction of a vector (genetic vehicle), which transports the genes of interest, flanked by the necessary controlling sequences, i.e. promoter and terminator, and deliver the genes into the host plant. There are two kinds of gene transfer methods in plants:

(i) Vector-mediated or indirect gene transfer: Among the various vectors used in plant in plant transformation, the Ti-plasmid of Agrobacterium tumefaciens has been used extensively. This bacterium is also known as natural ...