What is Biotechnology?
Frequently asked questions
What is biotechnology?
In a strict sense, it means altering live cells and putting them to work. By splicing new genes into the DNA of bacteria or other organisms, scientists can program them to make drugs. They can also introduce new genes into crops and create microbes that produce industrial chemicals.
More broadly, biotech embraces a spectrum of medical science, from sophisticated biochemistry to machines that can build new DNA. In the business world, the term ‘‘biotechnology company’’ is often shorthand for any small or start-up pharmaceutical firm.
How are biotech drugs different?
Conventional drugs are made by mixing chemicals in a factory. They can usually be shaped into a pill and swallowed. Biotechnology drugs are far more complex, mimicking substances produced by the human body such as enzymes, insulin, and antibodies. Instead of mixing chemicals, makers of biotech drugs grow live cells in a fermenter and then purify their excretions. The resulting drugs are almost always administered by injection.
What else can biotechnology do?
In agriculture, recombinant DNA technology has been used to create new crops, such as a longer-lasting tomato or corn that secretes its own pesticide. A strain of rice has been genetically modified to produce key vitamins for people in impoverished countries. In industry, the enzymes in laundry detergent are produced with biotech microbes, and manufacturers are developing biotech organisms to help make ethanol more efficiently and produce plastics without petroleum.
In the healthcare industry, biotechnology is part of a wider revolution in which deeper knowledge of human genes and cells is changing our understanding of health and the body. Genomics and other cutting-edge fields of biology are quickly transforming the way researchers discover new drugs and how doctors test patients for disease.
How old is biotechnology?
Although farmers have been cross-breeding plants and animals for much of human history, genetic engineering began in 1973, when two California researchers first grafted new DNA into a living bacterium. In 1982, the federal government approved the first biotechnology drug: human insulin produced by genetically altered bacteria.
Is biotechnology dangerous?
In its early years, biotechnology was greeted with deep concern, and in some parts of the country laws regulating genetic engineering were passed. Fears of mutant creatures or public DNA damage proved unfounded, and the biotech industry today is considered relatively clean, with few risks or waste products.
But there is still plenty of debate about bioengineered crops. Proponents contend that genetically altered crops are no different from the cross-bred plants created for thousands of years, while critics worry that genetically altering plants and animals will unleash health and environmental effects that are impossible to predict.
How important is the biotechnology industry in Boston?
In the past decade, Eastern Massachusetts has emerged as home to one of the world’s largest clusters of biotechnology companies, rivaled only by California. Although biotechnology itself accounts for only about 30,000 jobs here — about 1 percent of the state’s workforce — it attracts billions of dollars in investor money and creates jobs in related fields, from intellectual-property law to lab cleanup.
