Bio Technology Biotechnology has applications in four major industrial areas including health care crop production and agriculture non food uses of crops . biodegradable plastics vegetable oil biofuels and environmental uses. For example one application of biotechnology is the directed use of organisms for the manufacture of organic products examples include beer and milk products. Another example is using naturally present bacteria by the mining industry in bioleaching. Biotechnology is also used to recycle treat waste clean up sites contaminated by industrial activities bioremediation and also to produce biological weapons.Red biotechnology is applied to medical processes. Some examples are the designing of organisms to produce antibiotics and the engineering of genetic cures through genomic manipulation.White biotechnologyalso known as industrial biotechnology is biotechnology applied to industrial processes. An example is the designing of an organism to produce a useful chemical. Another example is the using of enzymes as industrial catalysts to either produce valuable chemicals or destroy hazardouspolluting chemicals examples using oxidoreducatses are given in Feng Applications of oxidoreductases Recent progress Ind. Biotechnol. White biotechnology tends to consume less in resources than traditional processes used to produce industrial goods.Green biotechnology is biotechnology applied to agricultural processes. An example is the designing of transgenic plants to grow under specific environmental conditions or in the presence or absence of certain agricultural chemicals. One hope is that green biotechnology might produce more environmentally friendly solutions than traditional industrial agriculture. An example of this is the engineering of a plant to express a pesticide thereby eliminating the need for external application of pesticides. An example of this would be Bt corn. Whether or not green biotechnology products such as this are ultimately more environmentally friendly is a topic of considerable debate.
The term blue biotechnology has also been used to describe the marine and aquatic applications of biotechnology but its use is relatively rare.
The investments and economic output of all of these types of applied biotechnologies form what has been described as the bioeconomy.Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field which addresses biological problems using computational techniques and makes the rapid organization and analysis of biological data possible. The field may also be referred to as computational biology and can be defined as conceptualizing biology in terms of molecules and then applying informatics techniques to understand and organize the information associated with these molecules on a large scale. Bioinformatics plays a key role in various areas such as functional genomics structural genomics and proteomics and forms a key component in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector.Pharmacogenomics is the study of how the genetic inheritance of an individual affects hisher body’s response to drugs. It is a coined word derived from the world pharmacology and genomics. It is hence the study of the relationship between pharmaceuticals and genetics. The vision of pharmacogenomics is to be able to design and produce drugs that are adapted to each person’s genetic makeup.. Development of tailormade medicines. Using pharmacogenomics pharmaceutical companies can create drugs based on the proteins enzymes and RNA molecules that are associated with specific genes and diseases. These tailormade drugs promise not only to maximize therapeutic effects but also to decrease damage to nearby healthy cells.. More accurate methods of determining appropriate drug dosages. Knowing a patient’s genetics will enable doctors to determine how well his her body can process and metabolize a medicine. This will maximize the value of the medicine and decrease the likelihood of overdose.
RNA
Ribonucleic acid or RNA is a nucleic acid consisting of many nucleotides that form a polymer. Each nucleotide consists of a nitrogenous base a ribose sugar and a phosphate. RNA plays several important roles in the processes of translating genetic information from deoxyribonucleic acid DNA into proteins. One type of RNA acts as a messenger between DNA and the protein synthesis complexes known as ribosomes others form vital portions of the structure of ribosomes act as essential carrier molecules for amino acids to be used in protein synthesis or change which genes are active.
DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid while RNA stands for ribonucleic acid. RNA is very similar to DNA but differs in a few important structural details RNA is usually single stranded while DNA is usually double stranded. RNA nucleotides contain ribose while DNA contains deoxyribose a type of ribose that lacks one oxygen atom and RNA uses the nucleotide uracil in its composition instead of thymine which is present in DNA. RNA is transcribed from DNA by enzymes called RNA polymerases and is generally further processed by other enzymes some of them guided by noncoding RNAs.RNA is a polymer with a ribose and phosphate backbone and four different nucleotide bases adenine guanine cytosine and uracil. The first three are the same as those found in DNA but in RNA thymine is replaced by uracil as the base complementary to adenine. This base is also a pyrimidine and is very similar to thymine. In DNA however uracil is readily produced by chemical degradation of cytosine so having thymine as the normal base makes detection and repair of such incipient mutations more efficient. Thus uracil is appropriate for RNA where quantity is important but lifespan is not whereas thymine is appropriate for DNA where maintaining sequence with high fidelity is more critical.There are also numerous modified bases and sugars found in RNA that serve many different roles. Pseudouridine in which the linkage between uracil and ribose is changed from a C–N bond to a C–C bond and ribothymidine T are found in various places most notably in the loop of tRNA. Another notable modified base is hypoxanthine a deaminated guanine base whose nucleoside is called inosine. Inosine plays a key role in the Wobble Hypothesis of the genetic code. There are nearly other naturally occurring modified nucleosides of which pseudouridine and nucleosides with Omethylribose are by far the most common. The specific roles of many of these modifications in RNA are not fully understood. However it is notable that in ribosomal RNA many of the posttranslational modifications occur in highly functional regions such as the peptidy transferase center and the subunit interface implying that they are important for normal function.The most important structural feature of RNA that distinguishes it from DNA is the presence of a hydroxyl group at the position of the ribose sugar. The presence of this functional group enforces the Cendo sugar conformation as opposed to the Cendo conformation of the deoxyribose sugar in DNA that causes the helix to adopt the Aform geometry rather than the Bform most commonly observed in DNA. This results in a very deep and narrow major groove and a shallow and wide minor groove. A second consequence of the presence of the hydroxyl group is that in conformationally flexible regions of an RNA molecule that is not involved in formation of a double helix it can chemically attack the adjacent phosphodiester bond to cleave the backbone.
Comparison With DNA RNA and DNA differ in three main ways. First unlike DNA which is doublestranded RNA is a singlestranded molecule in most of its biological roles and has a much shorter chain of nucleotides. Secondly while DNA contains deoxyribose RNA contains ribose there is no hydroxyl group attached to the pentose ring in the position in DNA whereas RNA has two hydroxyl groups. These hydroxyl groups make RNA less stable than DNA because it is more prone to hydrolysis. In light of this several types of RNA tRNA rRNA contain a great deal of secondary structure which help promote stability. Thirdly the complementary nucleotide to adenine is not thymine as it is in DNA but rather uracil which is an unmethylated form of thymine.
Like DNA most biologically active RNAs including tRNA rRNA snRNAs and other noncoding RNAs such as the SRP RNAs are extensively base paired to form double stranded helices. Structural analysis of these RNAs have revealed that they are not singlestranded but rather highly structured. Unlike DNA this structure is not just limited to long doublestranded helices but rather collections of short helices packed together into structures akin to proteins. In this fashion RNAs can achieve chemical catalysis like enzymes. For instance determination of the structure of the ribosome an enzyme that catalyzes peptide bond formation revealed that its active site is composed entirely of RNA.Synthesis of RNA is usually catalyzed by an enzyme RNA polymerase using DNA as a template. Initiation of synthesis begins with the binding of the enzyme to a promoter sequence in the DNA usually found upstream of a gene. The DNA double helix is unwound by the helicase activity of the enzyme. The enzyme then progresses along the template strand in the direction synthesizing a complementary RNA molecule with elongation occurring in the direction. The DNA sequence also dictates where termination of RNA synthesis will occur.There are also a number of RNAdependent RNA polymerases as well that use RNA as their template for synthesis of a new strand of RNA. For instance a number of RNA viruses such as poliovirus use this type of enzyme to replicate their genetic material. Also it is known that RNAdependent RNA polymerases are required for the RNA interference pathway in many organisms.
Messenger RNA is RNA that carries information from DNA to the ribosome sites of protein synthesis in the cell. In eukaryotic cells once mRNA has been transcribed from DNA it is processed before being exported from the nucleus into the cytoplasm where it is bound to ribosomes and translated into its corresponding protein form with the help of tRNA. In prokaryotic cells which do not have nucleus and cytoplasm compartments mRNA can bind to ribosomes while it is being transcribed from DNA. After a certain amount of time the message degrades into its component nucleotides usually with the assistance of ribonucleases.Transfer RNA is a small RNA chain of about nucleotides that transfers a specific amino acid to a growing polypeptide chain at the ribosomal site of protein synthesis during translation. It has sites for aminoacid attachment and an anticodon region for codon recognition that binds to a specific sequence on the messenger RNA chain through hydrogen bonding. It is a type of noncoding RNA.
DNA and RNA In the cytoplasm ribosomal RNA and protein combine to form a nucleoprotein called a ribosome. The ribosome binds mRNA and carries out protein synthesis. Several ribosomes may be attached to a single mRNA at any time.RNA genes sometimes referred to as noncoding RNA or small RNA are genes that encode RNA which is not translated into a protein. The most prominent examples of RNA genes are transfer RNA tRNA and ribosomal RNA rRNA both of which are involved in the process of translation. However since the late s many new RNA genes have been found and thus RNA genes may play a much more significant role than previously thought.In the late s and early there has been persistent evidence of more complex transcription occurring in mammalian cells and possibly others. This could point towards a more widespread use of RNA in biology particularly in gene regulation. A particular class of noncoding RNA micro RNA miRNA has been found in many eukaryotes like rice fruit flies and humans and clearly plays an important role in regulating other genes through a processes called RNA interference RNAi.
Although RNA contains only four bases in comparison to the twentyodd amino acids commonly found in proteins certain RNAs are still able to catalyse chemical reactions. These include cutting and ligating other RNA molecules and also the catalysis of peptide bond formation in the ribosome.
Doublestranded RNA or dsRNA is RNA with two complementary strands similar to the DNA found in all higher cells. dsRNA forms the genetic material of some viruses. In eukaryotes it acts as a trigger to initiate the process of RNA interference and is present as an intermediate step in the formation of siRNAs small interfering RNAs. siRNAs are often confused with miRNAs siRNAs are doublestranded whereas miRNAs are singlestranded. Although initially single stranded there are regions of intramolecular association causing hairpin structures in premiRNAs immature miRNAs. Very recently dsRNA has been found to induce gene expression at transcriptional level a phenomenon named small RNA induced gene activation RNAa. Such dsRNA is called small activating RNA saRNA.
The RNA world hypothesis proposes that the earliest forms of life relied on RNA both to carry genetic information like DNA does now and to catalyze biochemical reactions like an enzyme. According to this hypothesis descendants of these early lifeforms gradually integrated DNA and proteins into their metabolism.The functional form of single stranded RNA molecules like proteins frequently requires a specific tertiary structure. The scaffold for this structure is provided by secondary structural elements which are hydrogen bonds within the molecule. This leads to several recognizable domains of secondary structure like hairpin loops bulges and internal loops. The secondary structure of RNA molecules can be predicted computationally by calculating the minimum free energies MFE structure for all different combinations of hydrogen bondings and domains. There has been a significant amount of research directed at the RNA structure prediction problem.