The History of Biotechnology

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The History of Biotechnology
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History of Biotechnology

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Biotechnology
Ancient
Classical
Modern
NEED KNOWLEDGE gt TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES
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Ancient Biotechnology
Domestication and Agriculture Ancient
Plant Germplasm (living tissue from which new
plants can be grown) History of Fermented
Foods and Beverages (the beginning of
Classical Biotechnology)
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Domestication
Nomadic lifestyle of prehistoric peoples -
gather food and hunt animals - 10K years ago
they abandoned their nomadic ways and started
to domesticate plants and animals -
archaeological findings ancient farming sites
New World, the Far East, and Europe at the
same time
Agriculture developed independently in several
areas of the world
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Domestication
9000 BC - First evidence of plant domestication
in hills above Tigris River 5000 BC -
Agricultural communities exist in
Mesopotamia 2000 BC - The Babylonians and
Egyptians left pictorial evidence that dogs,
sheep, and cattle had been
domesticated
It is unclear what exactly prompted a shift to a
more sedentary lifestyle, but
- increasing demand for food due to population
growth - natural dwindling of herds of
migratory animals
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Ancient Plant Germplasm
1000 BC - Domestication complete for all
important food crops in the new world
- Selected seeds, cuttings, or tubers
from superior plants for the next
planting 700 BC - Assyrians and Babylonians
- Hand pollination of date palm
Large-scale organized seed production began in
the early 1900s
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Ancient Plant Germplasm
Nikolai I. Vavilov (1887-1943), Russian plant
geneticist and agronomist
collected and catalogued thousands
of ancient crop plants and their wild
relatives. -Between 1923 and 1931, he traveled
extensively in the Soviet Union and in over
50 countries to collect economically
important plant varieties - beans, pea,
chickpeas, maize, lentils, oats, rye,
wheat -Established one of the
first important gene banks for long-term
storage of important plant germplasm.

Demonstrated the economic value of germplasm
collection particularly with respect to
breeding programs for disease resistance
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Ancient Plant Germplasm
As the Soviet government suppressed Mendelian
genetics, the US was establishing centers for
the preservation, study, and distribution of
germplasm. National Seed Storage Laboratory -
Fort Collins Colorado
National Center for Genetic Resources
Preservation
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CGIAR - Consultative Group of International
Agricultural Research
Stores plant material such as seeds, plant
cuttings, and tubers. - storage is either short-,
intermediate, and long-term Ex. Seeds in
intermediate-term storage are kept at -5 - 0 oC
Dried seeds are stored in sealed containers at -
20 oC - long-term to last over 100 years -
Periodic germination and viability tests are
performed Tissues are now also kept in tissue
culture - individual cells capable of
regenerating new platelets.
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Ancient Biotechnology FERMENTATION
4000 BC - Egyptians used yeast in wine and
bread making 2000 BC - Chinese develop
fermentation
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Fermented Foods

• Once people settled in villages, the development
  of new foods was possible - accidental discovery!
• food contamination often destroys the food
  reserve
• in some cases the microbial activity enhances the
  flavor and texture
• kimchi - sauerkraut - yogurt - cheese

FERMENTATION - (lat.) fervere gt to boil
addition of
yeast to fruit juice gt wine
yeast to malt and grain gt beer
aroma of
bread baking gt alcohol produced
bread rises gt because of trapped CO2
CO2
Glucose --gt - -gt - -gt Pyruvate ---gt
Acetaldeyhyde ------gt Ethanol
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Classical Biotechnology
Knowledge drives technology scientific and
applied knowledge practical experience
From mid-nineteenth century knowledge of
cell processes - refined fermentation
technology
Brewers began producing alcohol on a large scale
in the early 1700s
By the 1800s brewers knew to use pure yeast
cultures
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Classical Biotechnology
1822-1895
Louis Pasteur - germ theory rather than
spontaneous generation

• microbes are responsible for
• fermentation
• - proved that fermentation is the result of
• activity of yeasts and bacteria.

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Classical Biotechnology
Sir Alexander Fleming 1881 - 1995 Nobel prize
1945
Fleming left culture dishes lying around He
found that an unusual mold had germinated on the
plate. and inhibited the growth of the bacterium
that was growing on this plate.
A crude extract of the mold was then shown to
have antibacterial properties. This observation
led Fleming to discover in 1928 and by 1929 an
antibiotic that was produced by the mold
Penicillium.
Fleming did not attempt to purify penicillin. But
in the late 1930s Australian Howard Florey and
Chain and others developed penicillin into a
clinical antibiotic in 1940-41. Fleming,
Florey, and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine.
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Classical Biotechnology
- Penicillin was produced by the fermentation
of cultured Penicillium.
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Classical Biotechnology - ANTIBIOTICS
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Foundation of Modern Biotechnology
Knowledge of cell structure biochemical
reactions genetic make-up of organisms