Interesting science facts about biotechnology

Biotechnology is as its name suggests technology based on biology but it also uses other sciences like agriculture and medicine, and the modern society usually connects biotechnology with the increasingly popular genetic engineering.

The difference between biotechnology and bioengineering is that bioengineering is actually for of biotechnology oriented mostly on utilizing different mechanical principles and approaches to interfacing with and exploiting living things.

Though biotechnology has has its primary emphasis on biological sciences (genetics, microbiology, animal cell culture, molecular biology, biochemistry, embryology, cell biology) that doesn't prevent it from using knowledge and methods from outside the field of biology (chemical engineering, information technology, biorobotics, etc).

Agriculture is also a part of biotechnology since it uses different biological approaches to improve cultivation of plants.

There are several branches of biotechnology like bioinformatics, blue biotechnology, green biotechnology, red biotechnology, and white biotechnology.

Bioinformatics main purpose is to try solving biological problems with the help from computer technology.

Blue biotechnology as its name suggests is referred to marine and aquatic applications that originate from biotechnology. This field of biotechnology is very rarely used on global scale.

Green biotechnology refers to different biological approaches and applications that tend to produce more environmentally friendly solutions than traditional industrial agriculture (for instance use of pesticides).

Red biotechnology refers to different medical processes mostly in form of genetic engineering.

White biotechnology means applying biotechnological solutions to different industrial purposes and is often referred to as the industrial biology.

An important part of biotechnology, genetic engineering has raised many controversial question and ethical issues across the globe, especially cloning issue.

Rapid technological advance over the last few decades contributed to popularity of biotechnology, and biotechnology should remain one of the dominant scientific disciplines in years to come.