Biotechnology

What biotechnology means

Biotechnology is the application of living organisms, or the processes they carry out, to produce goods or services that are useful to humans. It ranges from age-old food-making practices to advanced laboratory techniques, and is generally divided into traditional and modern biotechnology.

Traditional biotechnology

Traditional, or conventional, biotechnology uses the natural biological processes of an organism, especially fermentation, without directly altering its genetic material. Examples include using yeast to make bread rise and to brew alcoholic drinks, and using specific bacteria and fungi to produce fermented foods such as tempeh, soy sauce, and yoghurt.

Modern biotechnology

Modern biotechnology directly manipulates the genetic material of an organism using techniques developed from molecular biology. This includes genetic engineering, which transfers genes between organisms, and tissue culture, which grows new plants from a small piece of tissue taken from a parent plant, producing large numbers of genetically identical, disease-free offspring.

Applications and how this is examined

Biotechnology has applications across medicine, such as producing vaccines and antibiotics, agriculture, such as producing pest-resistant crops and disease-free seedlings, and industry, such as producing enzymes for detergents and food processing.

SPM questions commonly ask you to classify a described process as traditional or modern biotechnology, to compare the two using a table, or to explain what tissue culture is used for in agriculture.

How genetic engineering produces a protein

Genetic engineering is the modern technique used to make bacteria produce a human protein such as insulin. It transfers a chosen gene from one organism into another so that the second organism carries out the instruction the gene codes for.

1. The gene that codes for the desired protein, such as human insulin, is identified and cut out of human DNA using a restriction enzyme.
2. A plasmid is removed from a bacterium and cut open with the same restriction enzyme, leaving matching sticky ends.
3. The human gene is inserted into the plasmid and joined using the enzyme ligase, forming a recombinant plasmid.
4. The recombinant plasmid, acting as a vector, is returned to a host bacterium.
5. The bacterium is cultured and multiplies rapidly, reading the inserted gene and producing the human protein.
6. The protein is extracted and purified so it can be used, for example to treat patients.

Worked exam-style question

Question. A company uses bacteria to make human insulin. (a) Name the type of biotechnology used.

(b) Name the enzyme that cuts the insulin gene out of human DNA and the enzyme that joins it into the plasmid. (c) Explain why bacteria are suitable for producing the protein in large amounts.

(d) State one advantage of insulin made this way compared with insulin extracted from animals.

Model answer. (a) Modern biotechnology, specifically genetic engineering. (b) A restriction enzyme cuts the gene out, and the enzyme ligase joins it into the plasmid to form a recombinant plasmid.

(c) Bacteria reproduce rapidly and in large numbers under controlled conditions, so many copies of the gene are expressed and a large quantity of protein is produced quickly and cheaply. (d) The insulin produced is identical to human insulin, so it is less likely to cause an allergic reaction than insulin taken from another species, and it can be produced in a steady, large supply.

Practice question

Try this. A farmer plants a crop into which a gene for pest resistance has been inserted. (a) What term describes this crop?

(b) State one benefit and one possible concern of growing it. (c) Name the modern biotechnology technique that could instead produce many identical, disease-free seedlings from a single parent plant.

Exam tip

Key terms

• Biotechnology, the use of living organisms or their processes to make useful products.
• Genetic engineering, transferring a gene from one organism into another.
• Genetically modified organism (GMO), an organism whose genetic material has been changed by genetic engineering.
• Cloning, producing genetically identical copies of an organism or cell.
• Fermentation, the anaerobic breakdown of sugars by microorganisms, used in traditional biotechnology.

Source:SRC-DSKP-EN

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