Biotechnology

In the syllabus and the exam

Biotechnology is the broad use of living organisms, or parts and processes derived from them, to develop products or solve practical problems, and the syllabus expects candidates to recognise it as a wider category that includes both traditional biotechnology (long-established practices such as using yeast for bread-making or brewing, and bacteria for making yoghurt or cheese, which rely on organisms' natural biological processes without altering their genes) and modern biotechnology (which typically involves genetic engineering, tissue culture or other advanced techniques to achieve a more precise or novel result). A frequent error is treating biotechnology and genetic engineering as synonyms; genetic engineering is only one specific modern technique within the much broader field of biotechnology, so every instance of genetic engineering is biotechnology, but not every instance of biotechnology involves genetic engineering. Candidates are expected to be able to sort a given example correctly into traditional or modern biotechnology and to justify the classification by referring to whether the organism's genetic material was deliberately altered. Exam questions increasingly draw on Malaysian applications, such as biotechnology used in oil palm tissue culture to produce disease-resistant, high-yield planting material, and candidates should be ready to explain the specific biological process (in this case, tissue culture producing genetically identical plantlets from a single parent plant) rather than describing the application only in general terms. Candidates should also be ready to classify a named example, such as producing cheese using enzymes extracted from a microorganism, correctly as traditional biotechnology even though it involves a biologically derived product rather than a whole living organism performing the process directly.

Example

Using yeast to ferment sugar into alcohol for brewing, and using genetically engineered bacteria to manufacture human insulin, are both applications of biotechnology, though they use very different levels of technology.

Related terms

Genetic engineeringCloningGenetically modified organism (GMO)

Source:SRC-DSKP-EN