DNA BIOTECHNOLOGY
Project by Dylan Montgomery
What is the role of DNA Biotech, and how is it used in testing?
DNA Biotechnology is very helpful in many different ways. For example, vaccines and other medications would not be here without this valuable resource. Not only can it do this, but it can also lead you to a long-lost family member or to a top priority criminal, using fingerprint scans and reading genetic coding. Summing it up, DNA Biotech is one of the most useful things humans have come up with.
NC's National Rank in Biotech
North Carolina ranks No. 4 in the amount of Biotechnological Companies, weighing at about 90. California tips the scale at over 400 companies producing biotech products.
Biotech In Agriculture
Biotechnology is used in our crops to produce hardy plants able to withstand weather and insects. It's jumped rapidly due to high yields and low costs. Since the first commercially sold genetically engineered crop was grown in 1990s, we've gotten much more common with Genetically Engineered plants.
Biotechnology and Keeping Clean
Biotech is very useful for cleaning up many things. In water treatment facilities microbes are used to eat the sewage, creating clean water. They can be used for bioremediation as well, helping to clean oil and chemical spills. Another one is biopulping, for when they use certain fungi to soften wood chips in the process of making paper.
More "Healthy" Stuff
Drugs like Penicillin and Insulin are produced with the help of biotech, and I'll explain how.
Even though there is many more medicines than just those two in the above sentuence, I'll just use Penicillin as my example. In England, 1927, A microbiologist named Alexander Fleming showed up to his lab to find his bacterial colonies wiped out. He sadly decided to see what happened to them, and found that a fungus, Penicillium, wiped them out. He realized that this could become a very powerful antibiotic.
Years passed, and so did many tests. By June of 1945, over 646 Billion units were being produced each year.
Unfortunately, there are some potential "no"s on BIotech
With crops being altered with biotechnology, we really have to watch out for our health. There's bits of DNA not usually found in the plants. Scientists have also declared that genetically altered foods can cause allergic outbreaks. Chemical runoff can also affect our water. Cloning could also become a problem in the future as well, with people making genetically modified, unnatural babies.
If I had to choose...
A career I would be interested in that is connected with biotechnology would probably be something around a pharmacist. Biotechnology goes into the making of medicines, and this person distributes them to the public, making sure they are suitable for the certain patients prescription. They also do other things such as blood pressure management and cholesterol management.