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Question: in the intrest of biotechnology have you made a break through in the past 3 years?
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anon answered on 14 Jun 2010:
Biotechnology: “Any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use.” (nicked from wikiptedia).
Hi there, This is the kind of question that ought to be directed at scientists all the time. What exactly have you done with all the money we gave you? It’s not enough to say ‘I made some cells turn an unusual colour and videoed it with a swanky microscope’. You have noted the core of the argument which is what practical applications does your work have now/might it have in the future (some projects are slow-builders!) ?
I’m not afraid to say that I have made no breakthoughs in (specifically) biotechnology in the last three years. It’s just not what I’ve been working towards. The team I work in have taken a pharmacological agent (drug) used in another field and discovered new properties of it that make it an excellent anti-inflammatory agent (like steroids or ibuprofen but much stronger. ) I have used some really neat biotechnological brealkthroughs by other people. These include: gene sequencing, gene transduction, protein transduction. I used these techniques to make a new protein, grow it up and purify it. There’s nothing much more exciting than reassembling genetic code, discovering you’ve done it accurately and then using it to perfrom a biological function (protein production).
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