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Biotechnology Processes


Lisaduva

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The term “biotechnology” conventionally means the use of living organisms to manufacture useful things, so on a very high-level description of it “basic steps” is:

1. Find an organism;

2. Use it to make manufacture something useful.

We can expand this process by adding:

3. improve the organism;

4. repeat steps 1 through 3.

 

Some of the oldest biotechnologies, older than the term “technology”, are beer and bread making, which use yeast to convert sugar into alcohol or gas bubbles, respectively.

 

For most of history, the “improve the organism” step consisted of selecting or selectively breeding in a trial-and-error process to find variants better at making the target product. For about the past few decades, it’s included using genetic engineering to insert the genes for desired traits into the “improved organism”. For example, most insulin used to treat diabetes are now manufactured using E. coli bacteria in which the human genes that produce insulin have been inserted into their DNA.

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Your question is more than a little vague  "Biological process" can refer to anything made using living things, from the Roma Tomatoes on the slice of pizza I ate earlier (and the wheat in the crust) to the 50 units of long acting insulin I just injected into my abdomen (made with genetically altered bacteria).

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