emerging branches of Science

Bio Technology

Biotechnology is technology based on biology, more so when used in agriculture, food science, and medicine. It is also used often to refer to genetic engineering technology.

Before the 70s, the term was mostly used in the food processing and agriculture industries. Later it began to be used by the Western scientific establishment to describe laboratory-based techniques involved in biological research, like recombinant DNA or tissue culture-based processes etc. Biotechnology is a mix of many disciplines like genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, and embryology and cell biology. These are again linked to practical disciplines like chemical engineering, information technology, and bio robotics.

The cultivation of plants was perhaps the earliest biotechnological activity. Through this, farmers could select the most suitable and highest-yield crops to produce enough food. Other uses of biotechnology were needed when crops and fields became bigger and harder to maintain. Certain organisms and organism by­products were used to fertilize, restore nitrogen, and kill pessts

Uses

Biotechnology has vast potential for use in Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Medicine, Food Industry, Chemical Industry, Pollution Control and Environment.

(I) AGRICULTURE

The applications of biotechnology to agriculture are vast. The following activities will help to ensure sustain development in agriculture.

(a) Genetic engineering:

Crop plants like wheal maize, corn, cotton, potato etc. can be developed endowed with extra genes for disease and pest resistance and high yielding through genetic engineering.

(b) Hybrid seeds:

Hybrid seeds can be developed through biotechnology by union of two different genotypes which is superior to its parents under different agromic conditions. It is very successful in vegetable crops like brinjal, tomato, cucurbita etc.

(c) Tissue culture:

A major thrust area in biotechnological research in India is tissue culture. Various vegetative plants of agricultural, horticultural and plantation crops can be developed through micro propagation, clonal propagation, somatic embryogenesis. Plants supplied for "Social Forestry Programme" are developed by tissue culture. The main advantage of tissue culture application is that enumerable plants can be developed within a very short span.

(d) BiofertHizers:

Biotechnology plays a major role in developing biofertilisers.

A numbers of micro-organisms have ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen and enhance the fertility of soil. Hence these micro-organisms are called biofertilisers" (bio = living and fertilisers). The best examples are (i) Blue green algae: such as Anabana, Anabamopsis, Nostoc and Tolypothrix etc.

(ii) Free living bacteria like Azotobacter, Mycobacterium, Closteriainum, Rhodospirillum, Bacillus, Escherichia etc.

(ii) Symbiotic bacteria, like Rhizobium Legumisorium for Legume Plants.

(iv) Higher plant:

an Azolla Blue Green alga is the biofertiliser of paddy. They fix nitrogen increasing 20-30% of production. Rlizobium biofertiliser when applied to field can fix 50-200 kg of nitrogen per hectare per year. Azotobacter and Azospirillium are Biofertilisers for cereal crops.

The biofertilisers are supplied to field in the form of inoculants and can improve soil structure, texture, water holding capacity, supply of nutrients and proliferation of useful soil micro organisms. These are cheaper in comparison to chemical fertilisers without any side effects.

Considering the advantages of biofertilisers, Ministry of Agriculture, Govt. of India, has launched a national project on development and use of biofertilisers in March 1993.

A National Biofertiliser Development Centre has been established at Ghaziabad along with six regional centres. Under this scheme, the innoculant of these organisms are found in. labeled packets for selling in market. Subsidy facilities are there to encourage farmers for using biofertilisers.

(e) Bio-insecticides and bio-pesticides:

Biotechnology has reduced the use of pesticides and insecticides by developing pests and insect’s resistance varieties of crop plants and biocontrol agents.

(II) ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

Biotechnological applications in the fields of animal husbandry include production of superior breeds through cell fusions or hybridoma technology, improving health by developing safe and efficient vaccines for infectious diseases, embryo transfer, animal cell culture etc.

In the field of fisheries, biotechnology contributes development of feed of fish and prawn larvae, production of fish growth hormones by DNA technology, enhancement of nutritive value of fish and prawns through gene technologies, increasing production of fisheries through hormone technologies etc.

Artificial insemination acts as a powerful device to produce desired type of animal with increased potential. Calves can be produced from frozen and preserved cattle embryos. Now, it is possible to develop an exact copy of mother animal through Chiming Technology. Without any aid from its male counterpart, an Ireland ewe, Dolly is developed through cloning recently from her mother.

(III) HUMAN HEALTH

The developments of human insulin through microbes and human growth hormone for treatment of dwarf sin have already been achieved. Researches are done for developing monoclonal antibodies for cancer and sexually transmitted diseases diagnosis, treatment of cancer and detection of tambour metastasis easy bone marrow transplantation methodology development of interferon’s, blood clotting factors and many more^

(IV) FOOD

In the field of food industry, biotechnology is mainly applied for increasing nutritive value of food, better preservation, enhancement of flavor and protein content and prevention due to spoilage of food. Mass cultivation of mushrooms and food algue spiraling are also encouraged through biotechnology as they have higher protein content.

(V) INDUSTRY

From production of biomass and biogas for energy to biosensors for environmental monitoring, biotechnology plays a crucial role in industry. It is employed in biodegradation of plastics and polymers, management of pesticides in environment, treatment of sewage and industrial effluents, using microbes for oil drilling, microbial application for bioleaching, degradation of solid waters, sewage treatment etc.

Production of biogas and liquid fuel like methane, ethane and from agriculture wastes through fermentation is a significant achievement.

Application of biotechnology is increasing day by day with its entry to the new and newer fields. Really, we can simply say that biotechnology has brought a great revolution to our present day life.

Nanotechnology is the engineering of tiny machines. This will be done inside personal Nano factories using techniques and tools being developed today to make advanced products. This will result in a manufacturing revolution. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, probably the width of three or four atoms. A human hair is about 25,000 nanometers wide. So one can imagine how small these machines will be. Nanotechnology is sometimes called a general- purpose technology.

The reason is because, in its advanced form, it will have significant impact on almost all industries and all areas of society. It will help create better built, longer lasting, cleaner, safer, and smarter products for the home, for communications, for medicine, for transportation, for agriculture, and for industry in general.

To understand its implications, try to imagine a medical device that roams through the human body to find and destroy tiny clusters of cancerous cells before they can spread. Or a box the size of a sugar cube that holds the entire contents of a public library.

Or materials ten times lighter than steel that are ten times stronger. Nanotech will result in greatly improved efficiency in almost every aspect of life. It will have both commercial and military uses. It can be used to create powerful weapons and tools of surveillance. So it comes with benefits and risks.

Nanotechnology implies not just better products, but a much improved manufacturing process. With nanotech, building products becomes as cheap as the copying of files on a computer. This explains why it is sometimes seen as “the next industrial revolution”.

The power of nanotechnology will be contained in a personal Nano factory that can be placed on a countertop or desktop. It will have miniature chemical processors, computing, and robotics, with which it will produce a wide-range of items quickly, cleanly, and inexpensively. Products will be built directly from blueprints. Thus, high-quality products can be made

Nanotechnology Applications in:

Medicine

Researchers are developing customized nanoparticles the size of molecules that can deliver drugs directly to diseased cells in your body.  When it's perfected, this method should greatly reduce the damage treatment such as chemotherapy does to a patient's healthy cells. Check out our Nanotechnology Applications in Medicine page to see how nanotechnology is being used in medicine.

Electronics

Nanotechnology holds some answers for how we might increase the capabilities of electronics devices while we reduce their weight and power consumption.Check out our Nanotechnology Applications in Electronics page to see how nanotechnology is being used in electronics.

Food

Nanotechnology is having an impact on several aspects of food science, from how food is grown to how it is packaged. Companies are developing nanomaterials that will make a difference not only in the taste of food, but also in food safety, and the health benefits that food delivers. Check out ourNanotechnology Applications in Food page for the details.

Fuel Cells

Nanotechnology is being used to reduce the cost of catalysts used in fuel cells to produce hydrogen ions from fuel such as methanol and to improve theefficiency of membranes used in fuel cells to separate hydrogen ions 


Bioinformatics 
Bio informatics is the application of computer technology to the management of biological information. Computers are used to gather, store, analyze and integrate biological and genetic information which can then be applied to gene-based drug discovery and development.

Bioinformatics is a multidisciplinary field and requires people from different working areas. It is the combination of biology and computer science and is a new emerging field that helps in collecting, linking, and manipulating different types of biological information to discover new biological insight. Before the emergence of bioinformatics, all scientists working in different biological fields, such as human science, ecological science and many other fields, feel a necessity of some tool that helps them to work together. They knew they are all interlinked and had important information for each other, but they did not know how to integrate. In such circumstances, bioinformatics emerges to help these scientists or researchers in fast research and leads to quick inventions by providing readily available information with the help of computer technology.

Scientist and researchers spend their whole life in inventing things for human benefits. After so many years of development, they have collected huge amount of valuable data from their experiments all over the world and still this collection is continue and will always continue for the better development of human being. Sometimes, they need to repeat the old research because either it is hard to obtain old data or they do not know whether it exist or not; this wastes their valuable time. Let us take an example of DNA identification. Every species or human beings have particular DNA strands that contain the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms. By identifying DNA information one can trace generations’ links and can find the root of different disease. Earlier it was hard to manage this information. In order to collect and link DNA information from all over the world and to solve many medical complications, bioinformatics is a very helpful hand for them.

Information technology

Information technology (IT) is theapplication of computers and internet to store, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data, or information, often in the context of a business or other enterprise. IT is considered a subset ofinformation and communicationstechnology (ICT).