Biotechnology may be defined as the use biological processes, organisms or systems to develop and create different products. There are 5 main branches of biotechnology, ie Medical, Environmental, Industrial, Animal and Plant. Modern biotechnology provides breakthrough products and technologies to combat debilitating and rare diseases, reduce our environmental footprint, feed the hungry, use less and cleaner energy, and have safer, cleaner and more efficient industrial manufacturing processes.
Research in Genome editing, microarray, gene silencing using iRNA, human sequencing, stem cell research, tissue engineering and development of new antibiotics, monoclonal antibody therapy have significantly contributed in improvement of human health but there is still more work and research that needs to be done in these areas. Biotechnology Research in agriculture is another promising area to design transgenic plants for improving crop health in order to control plant diseases, make plants more resistant against adverse environmental conditions, improving nutritional content of plants/fruit and also to delaying fruit ripening.
The research scope in pharmaceutical biotechnology is vast and includes work on development of new drugs, nucleic acid product and vaccines. The research is focus on understanding fundamental molecular mechanism of biomolecules, synthesis and purification of novel drugs for the wellbeing of human beings. Research is also being done to extend shelf life and stability of pharmaceutical products, designing of nanodrug formulation, patenting and clinical trials. Bioinformatics research is rapidly increasing in biological research and medical lab to analyze large data set in order to open up hidden information in medical and allied science.