Biotechnology is a field made up of many interlinked areas of research. It is any modification of an existing biological process to enhance/improve its performance or to create a novel technique mimicking nature could be considered as Biotechnology.
Advantages of Biotechnology:-
- Improvement in crop yields and selectivity in desired traits in plants/fruit & vegetables. This is necessary in countries where food production is very low.
- Developing vaccines for preventable diseases. Targeted therapy for cancer treatment, Nano robots for cleaning plaque, for drug delivery for specific body parts is being studied.
- Improvement in processes used in the industry. For example, using enzymes instead of chemicals makes the process ecofriendly and hence, less carbon footprint.
- Producing energy efficient fuels and energy sources. Read about the microbial fuel cell.
- Increased Food safety with anti-microbial packaging, detection methods for contamination, avoiding food wastage by various techniques.
- Another interesting advantage is, use of microbes for cleaning up oil spills, for bio remediation purposes
With these advances, we do have disadvantages of Biotechnology. Mainly, antibiotics resistant microbes that are currently one of the biggest concern in pharmaceutical/healthcare. New allergens leading to new allergies to modified crop.
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