Talk:Biotechnology

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Way too many links

There are way too many external links on this page. A lot of these are not even that relevant. Will somebody please remove some of them???

I've added a clean up spam template in the external links section, it will be screened and trimmed soon. --Victor.P.Das 10:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Done. --Victor 15:39, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Bread & Alcohol

When was brewing of alcohol invented? How did archiologists decide bread was made 5000 years ago? From fossilized bread?

I don't know about the "first brewing", but as alcohol occurs naturally (just leave some fruits in the open on a warm day; monkeys do that and get drunk), I'm not sure it would apply anyway.

The bread was probably detected by residues on some tools, and on bad teeth in fossilized skulls... I'm not sure, but somewhere I have a (German) book titled "5000 years of bread", and they probably didn't write it without some evidence. I'll look it up and remove it if it's wrong. --Magnus Manske

The reason I posted the original question was that I believe early civilization had better chance to discover alcohol making earlier than making bread. Mainly because things turn to alcohol naturally as you have pointed out, even the monkey got drunk. But making bread seemed to me required some deliberate efforts. Hence I doubt that bread making was the first application of Biotechnology when brewing seems to be a likely candidate. For one thing, bread making could not predate cooking, however, making alcohol could easily done eons before the using of fire.

I'm sure making alcohol predates bread, I'm just not sure it is the first example of "biotechnology". As you said, there is (almost) no "deliberate effort" if making alcohol by just standing there and waiting for it to happen. It seems to me it's the same as waiting for fruits to grow instead of just eating the tree. Of course, I could be wrong;) --Magnus Manske

I disagree on this point. Discovering alcohol in spoiled fruit is accidental, but collecting fruits and place them in containers and wait for them to turn into alcohol is considered brewing and in fact a deliverate effort. And of course other technologies in brewry such as distillation came much later. Planting the trees for fruits is called agriculture, it is an application of knowledge, though not nessarily technology. Along the same argument, making bread is not technology either. So you either rule out both alcohol and bread or you put alcohol first. In either case, saying bread is the first example is inappropriate.

Defining biotech

The current definition excludes much of what we call the biotechnology industry. The gene chip, for example, is not a directed use of organisms by humans for production, but the use of technology to study DNA; however, gene chips and companies like Affymetrix that make them are considered part of biotechnology. Radioactive tracers places in the bloodstream is biotechnology. Raising chickens is a directed use of organisms by humans for production, but not what I would call biotechnology. I'd offer a better definition, but I'm not sure I can come up with a satisfactory one. How about "technology informed by modern biology, especially when used in agriculture and medicine", followed by a list of examples? - Tim

Actually I share the same view point with you but what is mean by modern biology?--meaningless 12:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

due to deficienciency of which vitamin leads to murmuring

There is a problem in the article. In it said taht vavilov carried research on animal breeding in 1800 Vavilov was not born in 1800 and he did research on plant and not amimal

You are right (unless this was somehow a different N.I. Vavilov, which seems quite unlikely). I removed it. -- Curps 08:36, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Maggots & Leeches

How is the use of maggots, leeches, etc for medical applications classified? It seems this is "red" (medical) biotech, but is there a name for this practice?--StAkAr Karnak 15:09, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

red, green, white biotechnology

Is this really established terminology? I've never heard it before and I feel pretty confident that there are plenty of 'biotechnologists' that have heard of it either. This sounds like something invented by a Wired magazine columnist. Opinions? ike9898 04:52, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

I agree. These terms struck me as very strange. Should be removed.

These colour codes are explained in an issue of the Electronic Journal of Biotechnology (EJB) entitled 'The Colours of Biotechnology: Science, Development and Humankind'. Although the article does not clearly define when and where exactly these codes were determined, it demonstrates that they have been used by governmental organisations like the United Nations, the European Commission and others for many years. The terms white/grey, red and green biotechnology are also well established in the biotech industry. I would therefore advocate keeping the terminology in the article. The EJB articles adds a much wider array of colours to these, many of which I also wasn't aware of. I suggest adding further colour definitions to the article as biotechnology in those areas evolves and the colours become more established. Next candidate is likely to be 'blue'.

The article referred to here is an editorial that goes through several ways in which concepts in biotech have been linked to colours. Featured alongside this red-green-white/grey division is an amusing 5-colour "Mad Cow alert" scale! Although "red" seems to be gaining currency as a term referring to medical biotech, these colours hardly form a comprehensive classification system in common usage -- that should tell us how they should be used in the WP. In my opinion, a passing reference to these is all that is required and appropriate. Ben Cairns 13:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I have worked in biotech in Boston, MA for 15 years, and have never heard this red/white/blue stuff either 24.60.137.141 01:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)ezracolbert@comcast.net

History

8000 BC Collecting of seeds for replanting. Evidence that Babylonians, Egyptians and Romans used selective breeding (artificial selection) practices to improve livestock.

8000 BCE is pretty early--it's almost certainly inaccurate to have Romans in this list, as they came on the scene significantly later. ~ Dpr 07:58, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Someone ought to make the timeline convention consistent. AD (Anno Domini) preceeds years; if we want to keep using it, we need to convert (for example) 2003 AD to AD 2003. For legibility, I suggest switching BC to BCE and AD to CE instead; both can follow the year. ~ GDM 00:59, 22 April 2006 CE.

Neutrality?

I know biotechnology is widely regarded as a good thing. The definition is broad enough to include selective breeding. But at a certain point we have to leave room for its abysmal failures.

Africanized bee

Students editing the timeline

I just wanted to let all wikipedians know that I have suggested that my students update the timeline. They are enrolled in a high school course, Honors Genetics and Biotechnology, at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.

Thanks. It would be still better on your part if you suggested them to cite references (Wikipedia:Citing sources) if possible. --Victor.P.Das 10:16, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Way too much spam?

Wow, this article has a lot of spam at the bottom. Are those really all necessary for this article? —Wknight94 (talk) 18:10, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I've added a clean up spam template in the external links section, it will be screened and trimmed soon. --Victor.P.Das 10:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Done. --Victor 15:40, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Allerca cats?

Should anything be mentioned about the genetically engineered cats of Allerca? Joffeloff 16:44, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Plant collecting?

In the timeline of biotechnology, I noticed the curious "1500 AD Plant collecting around the world" entry. Does anyone have an explanation of what this means? --Fjmustak 06:26, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I can only assume that it refers to early agriculture. Early civilizations sometimes collected plants and domesticated them in other areas. I am not sure whether agriculture is a form of biotechnology though. --Freyr 13:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I totally think agriculture is biotechnology. The species of grain (Wheat, corn, barley, etc..) we cultivate today look very different than their original ancestors, and all that differentiation was done in ancient times. It doesn't take recombinant DNA to change an organism... Don't know if this matters at all to the article, just wanted to add my eight cents. Adenosine | Talk 17:46, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

But 1500 AD? People only started agriculture 500 years ago? I would remove this line, both because it's ambiguous and if it means what we think it means, probably inaccurate. --Fjmustak 21:06, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps Plant collecting refers to the gathering of plants for taxonomic classification? In that case 1500 AD would be a reasonable time frame. Although I would find this very hard to classify as biotechnology, since it does not use organisms to produce a specific product or use. It is simply a scientific pursuit.

Patenting living organism

I know that in the American text books there is the legend that the first patent of a living organism in the History was in 1980, but it was a century before that Pasteur patented the first one. It was usual in Europe. I'll include -modified- the reference in the History article. Llull 20:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Definition

A definition of biotechnology: using living organisms which have been genetically altered using recombinant DNA technology; the organisms can either be used as living cells (eg bioremediation) or for production (eg transgenic goats that produce antibodys) or simply as sources of material (eg DNA or RNA) which is used in vitro to produce materials (eg, large scale in vitro translation). This definition would largely exclude diagnostic or analytical technology such as microarrays, DNA seqeuncing, etc: these are tools used by the biotech sector (in the way that a hammer is not part of the auto industry, but a tool used by the auto industry) This excludes anything prior to about , roughly, 1975, such as using traditional breeding to make better crops or beer. This also makes the distinction between allied industrys, such as tradional pharma, which uses organic chemistry to make products. 24.60.137.141 01:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)ezracolbert@comcast.net

Role of academia and the financial community

No discussion of biotech would be complete without mentioning the role of academic scientists and financiers (angels an venture capitilists