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Early Biotechnology

May 11th, 2008 · No Comments
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There are many important discoveries that acquire played swelling roles in the evolution of the biotechnology industry. Modern biochemistry and microbiology techniques utilize a number of molecular techniques that have developed in the past couple of decades as a result of the discovery of PCR, DNA fingerprinting, restriction enzymes, sequencing and cloning techniques. However, in the presence of we ever knew which a gene was, humans were manipulating cells in some very industrious ways, to produce foods, chemicals or improved crops. The list below outlines some of the more historical biotechnological techniques that laid the ground since this area of study, before the style "biotechnology" was ever used.

Fermentation to Produce Foods
Fermentation is perhaps the most old biotechnological discovery. Over 10,000 years ago mankind was producing wine, beer, vinegar and bread using microorganisms, in a primary manner yeast. Yogurt was produced by lactic acid bacteria in milk and molds were used to protract cheese. These processes are distil in use today with respect to the prolongation of modern foods. However, the cultures that are used have been purified and ofttimes genetically refined to maintain the most desirable traits and highest quality of products.

Industrial Fermentation
In 1897 the discovery that enzymes from yeast can convert sugar to alcohol lead to pertaining processes according to chemicals such as butanol, acetone and glycerol. Fermentation processes are still in use today in many present biotech organizations, oftentimes for the production of enzymes to have existence used in pharmaceutical processes, environmental remediation and other industrial processes.

Food Preservation
Drying, salting and freezing foods to stop spoilage by microorganisms were practiced long before anyone really understood why they worked or even fully knew the sort of caused the food to spoil in the first place.

Quarantines
The practice of quarantining to prevent the spread of disease was in place long before the origins of disease were known. However, it demonstrates timely acceptance that illness could subsist passed from an infected individual to any other healthy individual, who would then begin to have symptoms of the complaint.

Selective Plant Breeding
Crop improvement, through selecting seeds from the most successful or healthiest plants, to obtain a new crop having the most enviable traits, is a form of early crop technology. Farmers learned that using only the seeds from the best plants would eventually enhance and strengthen the desired traits in posterior crops. In the mid-1860’s, Gregor Mendel’s studies on inheritable traits of peas improved our perception of genetic inheritance and lead to practices of cross-breeding (now known as hybridization).

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