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Development of Biotechnology
Biotechnology literally is the technology based on biology. It is the application of scientific and engineering principles to the processing or production of materials by biological agents to provide goods and services. The application of biotechnology to animals has a long history, beginning in south-west Asia after the Ice Age, when humans first began to trap wild animal species and to breed them in captivity.
Selective animal breeding has been practised for nearly 10,000 years to produce desirable traits in livestock. Today, breeders are on the move to produce livestock that grow faster and convert animal feed to lean tissue, with less total fat.
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Breeders have focused not only on manipulating the composition of animal products but also on increasing production, such as by enhancing reproduction rates.
Increased milk production, decreased fat content, better wool quality, faster maturation rate, disease resistance and the increase in frequency of egg-laying are a few changes brought about by selective breeding. However, such methods of producing desirable traits take time; many generations of animals must be born and bred before an appropriate trait is finally expressed.
On the other hand, biotechnology approaches are used either to rapidly multiply animals of desired genotypes or to introduce specific alterations in their genotypes to achieve certain useful goals. To achieve the latter more efficiently, as well as to assist in conventional breeding efforts, the entire genomes of animals are being characterized using biotechnology tools, These activities have been arbitrarily grouped under animal biotechnology since they either utilize animal cells to generate products or apply biotechnological tools to enhance the usefulness of animals to human welfare.
Animals have become man’s constant companion, ever since their domestication from time immemorial. All domestic animals have undergone drastic changes due to the process of artificial selection by humans, under captive breeding with a restricted gene pool. Consequently, with the passage of time, and continued isolation from the wild gene pool, the tamed animals acquired startling traits, which have been put to use by the man for his survival and sustenance. Some have changed in such a way that they started yielding increased quantity of better milk or wool than others. Some others have displayed rapid growth and gaining of body mass or developed high fecundity, some became more vigorous and some just looked bizarrely different and aroused curiosity. The classical animal breeders have taken into account natural variability of animals and mated
them selectively inter seto develop innumerable breeds of domestic animals such as horse, dog, sheep, goat and cattle and other livestock animals that we see all around us in the present-day world.
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Animal improvement remained no longer a matter of interest of indolent bourgeois society, but it became a matter of necessity for human survival. The incessant population explosion puts a tremendous pressure on biologists to explore the possibility of developing new technologies for animal improvement under the conditions of shrinking resources, at the same time ensuring the quality of food, fibre, drugs and medicines for health care. Even though the production of food from animals is not only expensive but also inefficient from the angle of per capita utilization of energy, nutrients and space to produce similar quantity and quality of biologically assimilable protein (Table 1.1), there is an imperative necessity to continue to do animal farming for food, hide, fibre, various by-products, sources of dietary supplements like necessary amino acids, drugs, vitamins, etc.
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| The recently developed rDNA technology (recombinant DNA technology) provides us powerful tools that enable us to solve not only the basic food and nutrition problems but also to develop and produce a range of health care products.
The coming hundred years would be the era of animal biotechnology and all over the world, the strategies for animal production would change radically as the biologists learn to use these tools.
Comparative protein yield and use of resources by plant and animal systems
Source of protein |
Protein (kg h-1y-1) |
Plants |
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Algae |
30 x 103 |
Potato |
0.8 x 103 |
Rice |
0.6 x 103 |
Peanuts |
0.45 x 103 |
Wheat |
0.36 x 103 |
Animals |
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Fish |
1.0 x 103 |
Milk |
0.12 x 103 |
Meat |
0.08 x 103 |
"The use of animals, tissues, organs, cells, subcellular organelles, and/or parts of those structures, as well as the molecules to effect physical or chemical changes needed to generate new products for research and commercialization" constitute the field of animal biotechnology. |
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In spite of such a broad perspective, animal biotechnology is considered to be synonymous to rDNA technology and also to some of the older technologies along with the state-of-the-art cutting-edge technologies and related methods such as cell culture, monoclonal antibodies, bioprocess engineering and manipulation of reproduction. Thus, animal biotechnologists not only manipulate the genomes of the targeted animals, but also the process that exist in the organism but are out of reach for manipulation. Hitherto, the modification of such traits was either made fortuitously through the microevolutionary forces or by the strategies of artificial selection practised by the animal breeders. Animal biotechnology offers supplementation of selective breeding, helping to effect changes at the organism level by the manipulation of cells and genes within an organism.
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It creates novel procedures (protocols) for the effective intervention of biological systems and processes with the potential for bringing about modification, which otherwise is not possible.
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