Life sciences have been at the forefront of scientific and technical development for the past three decades and are primed to make major advances in this century. Many of the newest developments came about after the discovery in the late ‘70s that genes can be cloned, engineered, and made to express a host of proteins. These discoveries led to a surge of investments in biotechnology and bioengineering and have major implications in many fields such as agriculture, food industry,  chemistry, medice, environment...

           

    WHAT'S BIOTECHNOLOGY AND BIOENGINEERING?

    Biotechnology is the commerical use of living organisms to improve animal and human health, agriculture, and the environment. Biotechnology has existed since ancient times, when strains of plants and animals were hybridized (cross-bred) to produce offspring with the greatest number of desirable traits. Repeated cycles of selective breeding produced many present-day food staples. The modern era of biotechnology began in 1953 when the double-helix model of DNA was unveiled. Recombinant DNA technology, commonly called genetic engineering, began in 1973 when scientists successfully removed a specific gene from one bacterium and inserted it into another. Since then, the field of biotechnology has expanded at a rapid speed with applications in pharmaceuticals, agriculture, food, environmental engineering, and waste management.

  Bioengineering, on the other hand, is the application of engineering principles and design to life and medical sciences in order to understand, define and solve problems. Bioengineering is the area which is ready to tackle the problems of reverse engineering of biological system, and create new biological structýres from man-made materials.This fields covers the area of cell and tissue engineering, biomaterials, innovative biologics, processes, implants and devices.