The bombshell which hit the entire world and has wreaked havoc starting from Wuhan, China before sweeping across continents has once again tossed the field of biotechnology into the big picture as scientists around the world hunt for a vaccine to help fight the current pandemic by applying various biotechnological resources. With this, many including me have realized the huge importance of biotechnology in medicine and so I thought, why don't we get to know few things about this field and some of its top breakthroughs and advancements.
What is biotechnology?
Biotechnology is the application of available technology and knowledge of biology to provide services and products for the benefit of life. It has been widely applied in the fields of medicine and agriculture as well as for industrial and environmental purposes. Some of these applications have led to the production of the antibiotics and vaccines we use, beer, bread and other products in the food industry, bio-fuels such as ethanol and diesel as well as its application in the textile industry.
Many breakthroughs, advancements and emergence have been witnessed in the 21st century which have been widely discussed whilst contributing in various sectors especially in the healthcare and agriculture though some of them with great potentials especially in the field of medicine brought many controversies and have met criticisms along the line but nevertheless, ethical applications and advancement of biotechnology will surely play huge roles towards solving innumerable problems we frequently encounter; ranging from healthcare where advances will save lots of lives from many life threatening diseases such as cancer, genetic disorders and pandemics; ensuring food security in the case of agriculture and crop production as well as environmental regulation such as bio-degradation and bio-remediation. Below are some of the hot topics, advances or breakthrough in the world of biotechnology that shouldn't be new to you again after reading this or could be a reminder just in case you have heard or read about them before.
Top biotechnology breakthroughs:
1. Biological Computing
When the word computing or computer is brought up, ones imagination might relate it to a device composed of cables and other electronic or electrical materials but from the basic definition of a computer, it is something that is capable of storing, retrieving and processing data. From that perspective, computers are not just limited to electronic/electric devices. A good example is the human brain which is also a computer and probably the most powerful computer you may think of.
Biological computers are special types of computers that are specifically designed for use in medicine and instead of being composed of electrical wiring and signals, they use chemical inputs and biological molecules such as proteins, RNA and DNA; CPU is being replaced with DNA where all programs reside and just like the electronic computers we know, they respond to data and process it. They could be implanted into the body to perform several functions such as identifying all types of cellular activities and determining whether a particular activity is harmful or not, detecting mutated genes and treating damaged or diseased cells to therapeutic functions or to monitor the body's activities.
2. Stem Cell Therapy
You may have come across the term 'stem cells', wondering what they are all about and what benefits they could provide for people. Well, taking the two words involved, 'cell' and 'stem', a cell is the basic unit of life and serves as a building block of life while the word stem here means to arise from, derive from or to be brought about by. So what are stem cells? simply put, they are cells that are capable of developing into many different types of cells that would serve numerous functions. Just like all human cells arise from one cell (a zygote), differentiating into two, then four and so on until they eventually begin to form cells and tissues of various organs such as the liver, bone and brain cells in the body; so are these stem cells. Researches have shown that these stem cells can be engineered in a lab to produce specific types of cells to fix damaged tissues, replace damaged tissues or organs, correct parts of organs that do not work properly and also help in the research of how diseases occur and the causes of genetic defects in cells among many other possibilities. Stem cell therapy here would be just like replacing your old or damaged car parts with new ones, as simple as that and you just continue to enjoy your ride. Instances of healthcare benefits that could be seen are: treatment of chronic heart diseases, cancer, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries, osteoarthritis, diabetes and so on.
3. Human Genome Project
The 'genome' is a totality of all the genes that make us up and the focus of the human genome project (a.k.a HGP) when it was started back in 1990 was to completely analyse all the genome sequence of humans and mapping out all the genes (their location, size and sequence) in order to understand their functions and know which ones are critical for life especially in medical research. This project was completed in 2003, spanning across a period of 13 years; definitely not an easy work as there are about 3 billion DNA base pairs in the human genome and imagining the job involved in sequencing all of them, you just got to admit that it was not a cup of tea. The project cost around $3 billion during those 13 years but can be done nowadays at a cost of less than $1000 and this advance has provided many benefits to the society, enabling researchers to understand the genetic make up of humans which has helped in early and better diagnosis of diseases. An example is how it has helped researchers tackle the corona virus pandemic which has been ravaging the world as it provides enormous abilities to track the virus as well as in monitoring how quickly the virus spreads and how virulent it is as it evolves.
4. CRISPR-Cas9 Technology
This could-be-strange acronym, CRISPR (pronounced "crisper") stands for clustered regularly inter-spaced short palindromic repeats while Cas9 stands for "CRISPR associated protein 9". This technology is a form of genome editing (a group of technologies that allow genetic materials to be added, removed, or altered at particular location in the genome) and is probably one of the biggest science stories that will be seen in years to come. There were some other ways to edit genes which would normally take years as well as being costly before CRISPR but its advent has made gene editing cheaper and easier to carry out. So what does it do?
If you have not heard about CRISPR technology before, the cue about it is that it uses a 'find, cut and paste' mechanism. It can be used to treat devastating diseases and also for enhancements in plants, livestock and even people. When we want to treat a disease whether genetic, inborn or those that are infectious as well in some cases to enhance the genetic code of livestock, crops and even people, the Cas9 protein which acts as a scissors is inserted into the cells where it targets those genes that we intend to work on, for example genes that are responsible for defects in a body such as cancer or viral diseases and when the scissors finds this location, it can now make a cut exactly at the right place. Once this DNA has been cut, the new gene (which comes from a donor) is inserted (paste) in that location. Recently, though, new CRISPR editing systems have been created to not just cut through the DNA, in this case, using a guide system that deliver an enzyme to a particular enzyme and alter it, changing perhaps an A to a G or a C to a T, rather than just cutting and inserting. This breakthrough has shown prospects of eradicating HIV, cancer and finding solution for antibiotic-resistant bacteria as well as other genetic disorders in humans, plants and livestock but nevertheless, it has raised many ethical questions on its possible applications beyond therapy and misuse such as making designer babies (babies with desirable traits), attempt to eradicate aging, creating super humans and dangerous animals among many others.
5. 3D organ printing
This is a highly advanced form of manufacturing that allow for the printing of tissues, and eventually vital organs using bioinks in a 3-dimensional form unlike the regular 2-dimensional printing. Bioinks which are used to create these 3D organs are made up of cells and a carrier material, which is usually a bio-polymer gel needed to hold the cells in place, allowing them to grow, spread and even multiply, protecting the cells during the 3D printing process. These artificial structures are printed layer-by-layer using a model of interest, which would eventually resemble those of living human tissues and organs. 3D organ printing is still a very young field and have the potential of saving millions of lives that are threatened with organ failure as it would provide artificial tissues or organs such as kidney, liver, skin and bones faster and cheaper for patients who are on transplant waiting list without wasting precious time on transporting the patients. It still offers a means of testing drugs and cosmetics at cheaper costs to identify their side effects of drugs; this is possible because these artificial organs can also react just like the normal human organs. However, this field as young as it may seem still have a long way to go as well as a lot to accomplish and looking at the possibilities that could be attained, it is pretty clear that it would continue to evolve.
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