What About Agricultural Biotechnology?

2019/5/14 下午11)16

What is Agricultural Biotechnology?

By Theresa Phillips Updated September 14 2018

Biotechnology is often considered synonymous with the biomedical

research but there are many other industries which take advantage of
biotech methods for studying cloning and altering genes. We have
become accustomed to the idea of enzymes in our everyday lives and
many people are familiar with the controversies surrounding the use of
GMOs in our foods. The agricultural industry is at the center of that
debate but since the days of George Washington Carver agricultural
biotech has been producing countless new products that have the
potential to change our lives for the better.

01

Vaccines

Hero Images/Getty Images

Oral vaccines have been in the works for many years as a possible
solution to the spread of disease in underdeveloped countries where
costs are prohibitive to widespread vaccination. Genetically engineered
crops usually fruits or vegetables designed to carry antigenic proteins
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from infectious pathogens that will trigger an immune response when

ingested.

An example of this is a patient-specific vaccine for treating cancer. An

anti-lymphoma vaccine has been made using tobacco plants carrying
RNA from cloned malignant B-cells. The resulting protein is then used to
vaccinate the patient and boost their immune system against cancer.
Tailor-made vaccines for cancer treatment have shown considerable
promise in preliminary studies.

02

Antibiotics

Andrew Brookes/Getty
Plants are used to produce antibiotics for both human
Images and animal use. Expressing antibiotic proteins in
livestock feed fed directly to animals is less costly
than traditional antibiotic production but this practice raises many
bioethics issues because the result is widespread possibly unnecessary
use of antibiotics which may promote the growth of antibiotic-resistant
bacterial strains.

Several advantages to using plants to produce antibiotics for humans are

reduced costs due to the larger amount of product that can be produced
from plants versus a ​fermentation unit ease of purification and reduced
risk of contamination compared to that of using mammalian cells and
culture media.

03

Flowers

Manish Ladwal / EyeEm/Getty

There is more to agricultural biotechnology than
Images just fighting disease or improving food quality.

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There are some purely aesthetic applications and an example of this is

the use of gene identification and transfer techniques to improve the
color smell size and other features of flowers.

Likewise biotech has been used to make improvements to other

common ornamental plants in particular shrubs and trees. Some of
these changes are similar to those made to crops such as enhancing the
cold resistance of a breed of tropical plant so it can be grown in northern
gardens.

04

Biofuels

The agricultural industry plays a large role in the biofuels industry

providing the feedstocks for fermentation and refining of bio-oil
Tom bio-diesel and bio-ethanol. Genetic engineering and enzyme
Merton
optimization techniques are being used to develop better quality
feedstocks for more efficient conversion and higher BTU outputs of the
resulting fuel products. High-yielding energy-dense crops can minimize
relative costs associated with harvesting and transportation per unit of
energy derived resulting in higher value fuel products.

05

Plant and Animal Breeding

Enhancing plant and animal traits through traditional

methods like cross-pollination grafting and cross-
breeding is time-consuming. Biotech advances allow
for specific changes to be made quickly on a molecular
Oscar Suarez/Getty level through over-expression or deletion of genes or
Images
the introduction of foreign genes.

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The latter is possible using gene expression control mechanisms such as

specific gene promoters and transcription factors. Methods like marker-
assisted selection improve the efficiency of "directed" animal breeding
without the controversy normally associated with GMOs. Gene cloning
methods must also address species differences in the genetic code the
presence or absence of introns and post-translational modifications such
as methylation.

06

Pest Resistant Crops

Jeff R. Clow/Getty
For years the microbe Bacillus thuringiensis which
Images produces a protein toxic to insects in particular the
European corn borer was used to dust crops. To
eliminate the need for dusting scientists first developed transgenic corn
expressing Bt protein followed by Bt potato and cotton. Bt protein is not
toxic to humans and transgenic crops make it easier for farmers to avoid
costly infestations. In 1999 controversy emerged over Bt corn because
of a study that suggested the pollen migrated onto milkweed where it
killed monarch larvae that ate it. Subsequent studies demonstrated the
risk to the larvae was very small and in recent years the controversy
over Bt corn has switched focus to the topic of emerging insect
resistance.

07

Pesticide-Resistant Crops

Not to be confused with pest-resistance these plants

Verity E. Milligan/Getty
Images are tolerant of allowing farmers to selectively kill
surrounding weeds without harming their crop. The
most famous example of this is the Roundup-Ready technology

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developed by Monsanto. First introduced in 1998 as GM soybeans

Roundup-Ready plants are unaffected by the herbicide glyphosate
which can be applied in copious quantities to eliminate any other plants in
the field. The benefits to this are savings in time and costs associated
with conventional tillage to reduce weeds or multiple applications of
different types of herbicides to selectively eliminate specific species of
weeds. The possible drawbacks include all the controversial arguments
against GMOs.

08

Nutrient Supplementation

In an effort to improve human health

Doug Meikle Dreaming Track Images/Getty
Images particularly in underdeveloped countries
scientists are creating genetically altered
foods that contain nutrients known to help fight disease or
malnourishment. An example of this is Golden Rice which contains beta-
carotene the precursor for Vitamin A production in our bodies. People
who eat the rice produce more Vitamin A an essential nutrient lacking in
the diets of the poor in Asian countries. Three genes two from daffodils
and one from a bacterium capable of catalyzing four biochemical
reactions were cloned into rice to make it "golden". The name comes
from the color of the transgenic grain due to overexpression of beta-
carotene which gives carrots their orange color.

09

Abiotic Stress Resistance

Edwin Remsberg/Getty
Less than 20% of the earth is arable land but some
Images crops have been genetically altered to make them
more tolerant of conditions like salinity cold and

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drought. The discovery of genes in plants responsible for sodium uptake

has lead to the development of knock-out plants able to grow in high salt
environments. Up- or down-regulation of transcription is generally the
method used to alter drought tolerance in plants. Corn and rapeseed
plants able to thrive under drought conditions are in their fourth year of
field trials in California and Colorado and it is anticipated that they'll
reach the market in 4-5 years.

10

Industrial Strength Fibers

Spider silk is the strongest fiber known to man stronger

Cmglee/Wikimedia CC
2.0 than Kevlar used to make bullet-proof vests with a
higher tensile strength than steel. In August 2000
Canadian company Nexia announced the development of transgenic
goats that produced spider silk proteins in their milk. While this solved
the problem of mass-producing the proteins the program was shelved
when scientists couldn't figure out how to spin them into fibers like
spiders do. By 2005 the goats were up for sale to anyone who would
take them. While it seems the spider silk idea has been put on the shelf
for the time being it is a technology that is sure to appear again in the
future once more information is gathered on how the silks are woven.

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