History of Biotechnology

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Biotechnology

Classical

Ancient

Modern

NEED + KNOWLEDGE => TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES

* 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)

Ancient Biotechnology

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

Domestication

*Agriculture developed independently in several areas of the world

Domestication

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

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

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

Ancient Plant Germplasm

Large-scale organized seed production began in the early 1900s

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.

Ancient Plant Germplasm

Demonstrated the economic value of germplasm collection particularly with respect to breeding programs for disease resistance

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

Ancient Plant Germplasm

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.

4000 BC - Egyptians used yeast in wine and bread making

2000 BC - Chinese develop fermentation

Ancient Biotechnology FERMENTATION

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 => to boil addition of yeast to fruit juice => wine

yeast to malt and grain => beer

aroma of bread baking => alcohol produced bread rises => because of trapped CO2

Glucose --> - -> - -> Pyruvate ---> Acetaldeyhyde ------> Ethanol

CO2

Fermented Foods

Knowledge drives technologyscientific and applied knowledgepractical experience

* From mid-nineteenth century knowledge of cell processes

- refined fermentation technology

Brewers began producing alcohol on a large scale in the early 1700s

Classical Biotechnology

* By the 1800’s brewers knew to use pure yeast cultures

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.

1822-1895

Classical Biotechnology

*Sir Alexander Fleming 1881 - 1995 * Nobel prize 1945

Classical Biotechnology

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.

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 growingon 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.

- Penicillin was produced by the fermentation of cultured Penicillium.

Classical Biotechnology

Classical Biotechnology - ANTIBIOTICS

Knowledge of cell structurebiochemical reactionsgenetic make-up of organisms

Foundation of Modern Biotechnology