What is Biotechnology

Biotechnology is not a new discipline, but it is advancing by leaps and bounds and it has more and more Drew Maloney applications in our day-to-day lives: from pharmaceutical development to food production and the treatment of polluting waste. We explore this exciting field below and try to determine how far it might go in the future.

Biotechnology.
Biotechnology uses DNA to develop innovative products and services.
Although we literally have biotechnology in our genes, it never ceases to amaze us with its continuous innovations, almost more akin to science fiction. The revolutionary spirit of those advances prior to the creation of the term—such as the fermentation of bread, cheese or wine— has remained intact until the present day, more than 6,000 years later, just when human beings are wondering what, if any, are the limits of this technology, that could take us a very long way in the future.

Biotechnology uses living cells to develop or manipulate products for specific purposes, such as genetically modified foods. Biotechnology is thus linked to genetic engineering and emerged as a field in its own right at the beginning of the 20th century in the food industry, which was later joined by other sectors such as medicine and the environment.

Today, the five branches into which modern biotechnology is divided — human, environmental, industrial, animal and plant — help us fight hunger and disease, produce more safely, cleanly and efficiently, reduce our ecological footprint and save energy. The increase in investment and employment in this sector has been exponential in recent years. From 2018 to 2022, the number of employees increased by 11%, while the economic impact in the US is estimated at $2.9 trillion, according to BIO Media.