Talk:Biotechnology

How does Biotechnology solve problems in the Agriculture Industry ?

Im a student and we were given an assignment on this topic. Can anybody help me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.235.97.3 (talk) 11:48, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Poor writing

I started editing this when I saw an obvious mistake in the first sentence. As I went on, I found the paragraph is confusing and delves into specialized terms (such as vector and Agrobacterium) that are unncessary for an introductory paragraph. It would be good to re-write this.

"Before 1971, the term, biotechnology, was primarily used within the agricultural industries. Since the 1970s, it began to be used by the Western scientific establishment to refer to laboratory-based techniques being developed in biological research, such as recombinant DNA or tissue culture-based processes, or horizontal gene transfer in living plants, using vectors such as the Agrobacterium bacteria to transfer DNA into a host organism. In fact, the term may be used in a much broader sense to describe the whole range of methods, both ancient and modern, used to manipulate organic materials for purposes including the production of food or other substances derived from living things. So the term could be defined as, "The application of indigenous and/or scientific knowledge to the management of (parts of) microorganisms, or of cells and tissues of higher organisms, so that these supply goods and services of use to the food industry and its consumers.[2]" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnfravolda (talk • contribs) 00:43, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Notable researchers and individuals ... uh, well??

I think it is nice to see a list of important people, although it would have to be incomplete. However, this seems a quite incomplete and I can see several mistakes right off.

First of all, the section title is redundant (are any of these "individuals" not "researchers"?)

Second, why and how are people assigned to nations (Sydney Brenner assigned to the US??)?

Third, what makes them important to biotechnology (many of these people are pivotal actors in molecular biological science and not "technologists").

Fourth, there are some really glaring exclusions (Fredrik Sanger inventor of DNA sequencing, Kary Mullis inventor of PCR).

Perhaps it would be better to list people alphabetically and provide a short description of their contribution. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnfravolda (talk • contribs) 04:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Careers In Biotechnology

Article should talk about the careers in Biotechnology for young enthusiasts to get guidance. 122.161.59.156 (talk) 11:44, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Bad Source

Reference number 5 is unverifiable, as the link is broken (http://www1.ibisworld.com/pressrelease/pressrelease.aspx?prid=115). Removing the 1 after the www does not fix the link. The section that is referenced there is therefore also unverifiable. Here is a potential link that may help with creating a new, similar passage: http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/default.aspx?indid=2001. I do not have time to learn the guidelines and edit this myself, nor do I wish to disrupt the section if proper citations can be provided, so I'm hoping someone else will have more luck with this issue.68.63.139.125 (talk) 22:48, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Haven't check the article, but note that Wayback Machine is a useful tool [3]. Materialscientist (talk) 22:50, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the idea. However, isn't it perhaps a bad idea to rely on an archive like that as a reference? It did however serve as a useful way to search for the study. I searched for the quoted entire first paragraph from the wayback archive, and only 3 results turned up in Google, all of which reference the IBISWorld study which cannot itself be found. It looks as though the original source material was redacted from the web, which may be because of unreliable information. Given that the original source can no longer be located, it is my guess that it would be appropriate to remove the section referencing it; however, I am unaware of the policy for these sorts of situations.68.63.139.125 (talk) 17:48, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Bioscience redirects here

Why does bioscience redirect here? I'm not 100% sure, but wouldn't it be more accurate if it redirected to "Biology" instead? Wawawemn (talk) 13:31, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I was looking for the publication BioScience Trashbird1240 (talk) 14:23, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Rennet in the /* Improved taste, texture or appearance of food */ section

Normally I confine myself to purely grammatical changes such as dividing run-on sentences. Even I found the following discussion on the use of artificial rennet to be so petty and irrelevant to biotechnology as a whole that I removed it:

This also eliminates possible public concerns with animal-derived material, although there are currently no plans to develop synthetic milk, thus making this argument less compelling. Enzymes offer an animal-friendly alternative to animal rennet. While providing comparable quality, they are theoretically also less expensive. Katharine908 (talk) 00:02, 23 February 2013 (UTC)