Biotechnology impacts lives

Biotechnology is a broad range of technologies that employ living organisms or parts of them to make diverse products. For example, drugs and therapeutics, nutritional compounds, environmentally friendly chemicals and materials, biofuels, and novel functional materials can be produced through biotechnology. More broadly, medical biotechnology, agricultural biotechnology and industrial biotechnology will all play increasingly important roles in our

everyday life. Biotechnology can also be employed to degrade toxic or harmful chemicals and agents to solve environmental problems.

There are so many exciting things happening thanks to the rapid advances in biotechnology. The genome editing of living organisms, including microorganisms, plants and animals, is exciting with many potential applications. With these advances, we could enhance bio-based chemicals production, increase food production and maintain a better nutritional value, or we could manufacture organs for transplant.

We’re seeing some amazing developments in healthcare and the medical sector as well. New,highly complex natural compounds from bio-sources are becoming suitable for pharmaceutical purposes. Stem-cell therapy, ICT-integrated biotechnology, and many others will help address the health challenges brought on by an aging population.

Biotechnology will become as common as having a cell phone or going online. There is going to be an even larger number of biotech companies, both big and small, along with an increasing number of venture companies. In small villages or even at home, biotechnology might be used, just like in Science Fiction novels. You might simply ask a machine to make some household chemicals you need, rather than go buy it at the supermarket. Biotech trash

converters could do away with waste.

Biotechnology could also help to tackle large national issues such as healthcare. Global healthcare spending, currently, is about 8 trillion US dollars. That price tag could be as high as we have to go, thanks to biotechnology. Even as the population grows, costs shouldn’t increase thanks to technologies such as efficient disease prevention and well-being programs, precision medicine, genome editing, organ production, and stem-cell therapy. 

I think all of these will become rather routine. So by 2030, I think it is realistic to say that biotechnology will become a part of our life, from drugs, medicine and therapeutics to environmentally friendly chemicals, fuels and materials.

Sources: 

1) https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/what-is-biotechnology-how-will-it-change-our-lives/

2) http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/art-leisure/20161225/biotechnology-what-it-and-how-its-about-change-our-lives