What is biotechnology?

The word biotechnology comes from the Greek words bios meaning life and technikos meaning involving human knowledge and skills. Biotechnology can be defined as the controlled and deliberate manipulation of biological systems, whether living cells or cell components, for the efficient manufacture or processing of useful products. It makes use of biological systems and processes to produce products and provide services.

In simple terms, biotechnology is the use of living organisms by humans. It is the science for our century and it involves biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, computers and information technology to develop new tools and products.

We can distinguish between traditional and modern biotechnology. Traditional biotechnology refers to ancient ways of using living organisms to make new products or modify existing ones. An example of traditional biotechnology is what human beings have been doing for centuries: cloning plants. Each time a little branch is cut off from a plant and placed in soil to grow a new plant, cloning occurs. Over the past 30 years, biologists have increasingly applied the methods of physics, chemistry and mathematics in order to gain precise knowledge, at the molecular level, of how living cells make these substances. By combining this newly-gained knowledge with the methods of engineering and science, what has emerged is the concept of biotechnology which embraces all of the above-mentioned disciplines. With modern biotechnology we are not only doing the physical manipulation at the visual level but also at the molecular level. In modern molecular biotechnology, we select the desired characteristic at the molecular level and add it to the organism's genetic makeup. Whereas traditional biotechnology exploits  the potential of processes performed by living organisms, such as fermentation, modern biotechnology manipulates the genes of organisms and inserts them into other organisms to acquire the desired trait. However, both traditional and modern biotechnology share the same foundation:  the use of living organisms to enhance crops, fuels, medical treatments and other tools to help humans.

Humans have spent thousands of years selecting and cultivating the best traits that nature offers and now, with the help of biotechnology, nanotechnology and other sciences, we are able to improve these traits at the atomic level and develop safe and beneficial crops, medical treatments, biofuels and household products. Contemporary use of the term biotechnology  includes genetic engineering as well as bioengineering  that is the application of engineering principles in the fields of biology and medicine.