BY ENRY WIDIYARTI 08312241031

A. Conventional Biotechnology and Modern Biotechnology

The first scientist to introduce the term: biotechnology” was karl ereky (1917). In 1961 CARL GOREN HEDEN a Swedish microbiologist, defined the term biotechnology as a study of food production and service using living organism or living system. The organism were microorganism such as and fungi

Biotechnology develops as fast as science and technology do. Based on the technology used in the processes, there are conventional biotechnology and modern biotechnology

1. Conventional Biotechnology is Biotechnology that uses microorganism to produce food and service needed by human through simple process. Actually people have used conventional biotechnology since thousands of years ago to make bread, alcoholic, beverage and beer. people have also used conventional Biotechnology technique in making tempe, , oncom , and

2. Modern Biotechnology The improvement of understanding about gene and DNA has triggered off development of Biotechnology toward genetics engineering. After the discovery of DNA structure by JAMES WATSON and FRANCIS CRICK (1953) then in 1973 BOYER and COHEN invented genetic engineering technique or recombinant DNA technology. It is a technique to manipulate gene of an organism by inserting new gene or DNA into the target organism for specific purpose. This target organism with new characters is called transgenic organism. This technique is an example of modern Biotechnology. Modern Biotechnology is biotechnology that uses cell and molecular technology to make products, improve crops and livestock to benefit humans. The development of biotechnology is supported by interdisciplinary studies such as molecular biology, microbiology, genetics, biochemistry, cell biology and chemical engineering. Modern biotechnology products include single cell- protein, transgenic plants, transgenic animals, tissue culture, animal cloning, and selected seedling produced through radiation technique. B. Food Biotechnology

Various effort to push the foodstuff production up have been done continuously due to the over increase of human population. Biotechnology has been playing a role in increasing food production through many fields such as food processing, agriculture, and animal husbandry.

1. Biotechnology for food and beverage processing Some example of the use of biotechnology in food and beverage processing are fermentation, production of single cell-protein, and enzyme. a)fermentation Is the process of changing raw material into food or beverage using microorganism such as yeast and fungi. The fermented foods and beverages and microorganism involved in the fermentation are presented Fermented Raw materials Microorganism products Tempe , wastes and Rhizopus oryzae kara Tofu Soybean Lactic acid bacteria(lactobacillus sp) Tapai and Saccharomyces sp, rhizopus sp, aspergillus sp, and lactic acid bacteria oncom Tofu waste and peanut Neurospora crassa bingkil Natta de coco water and sugar Acetobacter xylinum cheese Milk( lactose and casein ) Lactobacillus bulgaricus or l. lactis

1) Natta de coco Originated from Philippine and resulted from fermented coconut water by acetobacter xylium . If the environment is suitable, the bacteria will grow fast and produce an enzyme to the environment to change sugar into fiber. Coconut water is nutritious liquid, rich in cellulose fiber, calcium, phosphorus, zinc, fat and carbohydrate. Making Natta de coco is influenced by many factors such as the ratio of Natta and the coconut water. The quality of the coconut water, the temperature of incubation (26-27C) , the quality of the raw material ”Natta”. The tool cleanness, the air and the ph media (3,5-4). To understand the process of making , do this activity below. 2) Tapai A fermented amylum by yeast. The major in yeast is Saccharomyces cerevisiae . Beside this yeast, there are another fungi used in the fermentation process such as Candida sp , Hansenula sp , aspergillus sp , and lactic acid bacteria (lactobacillus sp ). The sour flavor of tapai is caused by the lactic acid results from the lactobacillus sp , metabolism To absorb sugar, fungi produce an enzyme to convert amylum into simple sugar. This amylum will be broken down in condition without oxygen. This process is called fermentation. The existence of oxygen will block the fungus growth. The final

products of this fermentation are alcohol, CO 2, H 2O. Observe tapai packed in plastic bag. The plastic bag will be swelling, and water vapor will attach the inside part of the plastic. We will also smell the alcohol aroma from it. 3) Tempe Is product of conventional Biotechnology originated from Indonesia. Tempe is resulted from fermented soybean by Rhizopus oryzae or R. oligosporus . In this fermentation, protein is broken down into its simpler forms so that it is easier to digest. Other raw materials that can be fermented are kara beguk . Peanut oil waste ( bungkil ) and tofu waste. So we have many kinds of tempe as follow: tempe benguk , tempe bongkrek , oncom , and tempe kara . 4) Fermentation of fruit juice Cider, wine, and sake are some examples of the fermented beverage. Fermentation of an apple fruit juice by acetic and bacteria , acetobacter sp . and Saccharomyces cerevisiae produces and alcohol. In general, fermentation takes place under anaerobic for it still needs oxygen so that it is called aerobe fermentation. b. single-cell protein production Made from Saccharomyces sp, spirulina sp and chlorella sp . The microorganism are

grown in liquid media supplied with O 2 and sufficient nutrition. The use of single cell-protein as a source of food has been developed in the US ( the United states of America ) and France Production of food softener enzyme Resin of papaya can soften meat because resin of papaya contains papain enzyme. Eventually, pure papain enzyme has high economic value. Other pure enzyme and their use are presented in table: No Enzyme Microorganism Function 1 Amylase Aspergillus oryzae and bacillus subtilis 2 protease Aspergillus oryzae Dough softener 3 Bacteria protease Bacillus subtilis Meat softener 4 rennin Mucor sp Cheese production

C. agricultural biotechnology The biotechnological revolution in agriculture certainly has great potential for increasing and improving crop production. The following examples are some of biotechnological product in agriculture 1. Biological fertilizer The main characteristic of biotechnological fertilizer is the use of microorganism such as nitrogen-fixing microorganism and mycorrhizae a. Nitrogen-fixing microorganism Nitrogen-fixer are microorganisms which are able to convert nitrogen of the air to another form of nitrogen in soil, such as a root nodule bacteria and anabaena 1) Root nodule bacteria ( Rhizobium sp) live in the nodules on the roots of legumes. These bacteria are isolated from nodules and cultivated on enrichment media. Legin, which is one of commercially products of cultivated Rhizobium sp, can be mixed with the seeds will grow 2) Anabaena sp. Is one of Cyanobacteria . This microorganism form mutual symbiosis with some plants such as Azolla pinnata and cycas sp . A common technique to use anabaena sp as a source of nitrogen is by letting azolla pinnata grow in paddy field and use it as organic fertilizer.

Besides Rhizobium sp and anabaena sp some types of nitrpgen-fixers which can be potentially developed as biological fertilizers are azotobacter sp, azospirillum sp, clostridium sp b. Mycorrhizae Mycorrhizaee are symbiotic relationships between plants roots and fungi. Particularly Ascomycetes and Basidiomycetes . Their hyphae increase the surface area of a plant’s roots so that the plants can absorb more water and phosphorus from the soil. Some important contributions of mycorrhizae are: 1) Forestry: trigger off growth of industrial plant seed 2) Agriculture: increase the production of corps such as soybean and peanut 3) Animal husbandry; improve the quality of livestock feed 2. Biological Control

Biotechnology is also very useful for controlling pests and pathogens in more environmentally friendly. Biological control means making use the natural enemies of insect and pathogens such as

• Predator, i.e. flea-eater beetles • Parasitic fungi, such as Trichoderma sp , to repress pathogenic bacterial and fungi growth • Parasitic bacteria such as bacillus Thuringiensis t o repress larvae of cabbage, coconut trees, tomatoes, and soybean leaves • Virus such as NPV to repress a kind of leaves-eater maggot

3. Hydroponics and Aeroponics These techniques are useful to anticipate the decrease of agriculture fields a. Hydroponic Is Technique of planting plants in water without using soil. The nutrition for the plant is soluted in water and given to the plants by splashing using dipper or pump. The plants usually planted hydroponically are vegetable and fruits b. Aeroponics is technique of planting plants using air contains nutritious substances which is sprayed over plants roots. Vegetables which are cultivating using aeroponic technique have been proven to have good qualities, hygienic, healthy, fresh, more aromatics and tasty. Some examples of the aeroponic vegetables are caisim, pakcoy, lettuce, cabbage, and kangkung . These vegetables can be harvested after planted for few weeks or months. 4. Tissue culture Micro propagation is a technique for growing and manipulating pieces of plants tissues in a sterile medium. The principle of plant tissues culture is to create new plants which are genetically identical to the origin by using the totipotency of cells. Totipotency is the ability of cells to become new individual plants. This technique is a clone technique of plant, and therefore it is a vegetative reproduction. Tissues culture can be used as the source of seeds which has good qualities, uniform traits and can quickly produce seeds.

Tissues or cell from the organism is grown by using in vitro technique. The characteristic of tissues culture are:

a. Isolating or removing pieces of organ, tissues or cell from the plants and growing it in a tube or medium b. The explants are taken from the organ, tissues, or cells of the plants. c. Using nutrition media and hormone d. Aseptic, it means that tissues culture can be done is sterile condition In a simple way, tissues culture can be done in the following steps: preparing nutrition media, initiation (taking the explants) sterilizing, multiplying, root production and acclimatization (moving and adjusting the new plants out of the media)

5. Transgenic plants The role of modern biotechnology in agricultural is proven by the transgenic organism invention. Transgenic organism is an organism that has been inserted with gene from another organism. This aims to get new organism with new characteristic. The technique used to get transgenic organism is genetic engineering or DNA recombinant. Gene is inserted into vector, DNA agent. Vector can be in the form of plasmid or virus. Plasmid is independent genetic material outside the main chromosome of bacteria and can multiply itself.

One example of transgenic plants is the plants which resistant to pets or parasitic fungi. Vector that used is bacteria Agrobacterium tumefaciens . Plasmid is inserted with gene producing toxin isolated from Bacillus Thuringiensis to form recombinant DNA and then the plasmid is transported into vector cell. The vector cell is multiplied and then inserted to the plant’s cell. A list of transgenic plants is shown in table

No Transgenic plants Properties 1. Tomatoes Slow ripening, longer keeping time 2. Potatoes Resistant to pets and virus 3. Soybean, cotton, corn, sugar Resistant to herbicide beet 4. papaya Resistant to virus 5. Cotton, corn, paddy Resistant to pets and herbicide 6. Paddy Higher concentration of beta-carotene

6. Excellent Characteristic Engineering Technique

Naturally population of any organism gain new traits by mutation, genes assort through crossing-over in random and evolution. But these rarely happen because mutated organisms cannot easily survive. By applying engineering characteristic as they want, such as:

a. Biological radiation technique to gain outstanding mutant plants. b. Changing the number of chromosome in organism using mutagen (e.g. colchicines and streptomycin) and selected breeding c. Adding growth hormones such as gibberellins to gain seedless fruits, e.g. grape, watermelon seedless.

D. Animal husbandry biotechnology

Many efforts have been carried out to improve livestock productivity through breeding technique. Nowadays, animal husbandry biotechnology experiment has increased since the invention of cloning and genetic engineering technique

1. Animal cloning Inspired by plants tissue culture. Every single cell that is taken from the organ or tissues will be grown into new individual organism which is identical with its parent if the environment is suitable. In 1996, the world was shocked by Dolly birth. Dolly was first clone mammal invented by Ian Wilmut and his co – worker at the Roslin institute (Scotland). The basic principle of cloning technique is nucleus transfer. Nucleus that is used as the egg cell can be taken from nucleus somatic cell. Cell cytoplasm can be taken from mature egg cell or fertilized egg cell (zygote). Nucleus cell that is used in Dolly’s cloning was derived from a cultured sheep mammae gland cell that was fused with an enucleated lamb’s egg. 2. Transgenic animal The basic principle of creating transgenic animals is identical to the processes of creating transgenic plants. Transgenic animals that have been successful to create are sheep, goat and some livestock. Transgenic sheep or goat is inserted with human protein of antitrypsin that can be collected through their milk. This protein is needed by people suffering from amphisema, an inherited disease.

E. The Impact of biotechnology on food production

Besides giving much advantage in food production, especially in food processing, agriculture and animal husbandry, biotechnology has also some negative impacts.

1. Food processing The roles of biotechnology on food processing to improve food production are listed below. a. Fermented products give positive contribution to raise financial prosperity in any aspect of life 1) It can be a money-maker and decrease the number of jobless 2) It can give be an extra earnings 3) It increase the economic value of food and beverages 4) It is easier to do technically b. It gives alternative food sources such as Chlorella sp . And Spirulina sp . c. Transgenic animal and plants solve problem concerned with food production 2. Agriculture and animals husbandry The following are role of biotechnology in agriculture and animal husbandry to increase food production: a. The use of biological fertilizer can increase agricultural products b. The economic value of transgenic products, such as the ability in supplying great amounts of uniformed seeds. c. The use of biological control reduces the use of pesticides, herbicides, etc. in agricultural products as well as in field. 3. Negative impact biotechnology The negative impact of biotechnology on food production are listed below a. Waste from fermented food production, such as tempe and tofu can cause environment pollution b. It is worried that the transgenic organism released to nature can disturb the ecosystem balance c. It is worried that the organism resulted from genetic engineering give bad effect to human health d. It is worried that the use of chemical substance and radiation can cause environment damage.