Bioremediation

Bioremediation is any process that uses microorganisms and/or enzymes to clean-up a certain contaminated area or ecosystem trying to regenerate its original state. This includes cleaning up pesticides, oil spills etc.. However, the limitation in this technique is that there are certain pollutants that it cannot remediate such as heavy metals.
However the good thing about this is that it makes cleaning areas that were out of reach possible, for example underground water contamination was out of reach, but with bioremediation bacterias can be introduced into the ground water and they can do their job!

Transgalactic Ltd. (2005). Retrived on July 9 from http://www.bionewsonline.com/w/what_is_bioremediation.htm

Insuline production

Human insulin was the first drug to get a license to be produced through genetic engineering in the 70s. Insulin is a very important hormone in our bodies, it regulates the glucose level in our system, a deficiency in it or in the mechanisms that it is involved in may cause very serious diseases (e.g. Diabetes) and causes the patients to have to take insulin shots.
This has been the trigger for many researches concerning finding ways to produce insulin on a big, market scale and this lead to the production of insulin using genetically engineered bacteria placed in large tanks.
This has turned out to be quite productive and successful, opening more doors for this field to advance through and giving hope for reducing medication costs due to the increase of the production scale.

Mendelsohn, J. (2004). Retrieved July 5 from http://www.linde-kca.com/international/web/le/kca/likelekcacom.nsf/repositorybyalias/pdf_lindetechnology_1_04_biotechnology_eng/$file/LindeTechnology_1-04_Biotechnology_eng.pdf

Why is Biotechnology so important?

Biotechnology can :

• provide us with the tools to diagnosis, prevent and/or cure a wide range of infectious and genetic diseases
• increase crop yield by creating plants that are resistant to many conditions and diseases
• develop microorganisms that will produce food additives
• develop a livestock that are enhanced genetically
• help clean up the environment by removing pollutants and waste materials