Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials
Open Access

Abstract

Biotechnology represents the most exciting advance in the biological sciences this century. Molecular biology in particular has opened up completely new horizons for general basic research in biological systems, which subsequently are bound to be followed by new prospects for medical, agriculture and industrial application. Over the past decade the explosive growth in this area has been fueled by ever expanding development of the tools of molecular biology, permitting enormous ability to analyze, manipulate and apply living organisms and biological processes across the spectrum of health, industrial and environmental challenge, facing society. Biomedical applications in particular have been driven by major federal initiatives such as whole genome sequencing, as well as multibillion dollar human and animal health markets for the products and knowledge resulting from biotechnological research. The strategic integration of biotechnological tools into agriculture and animal husbandry has revolutionized the whole farming system particularly in developed countries. In marine biotechnology a frontier of modern ocean science not much stride has been made to develop earlier, though oceans represent up to two thirds of the surface of the planet. But now the time has come to divert our attention on this important vast resource, its usage for different purposes for the benefit of the mankind. Over several years-unscientific management and overexploitation of few target resources knowingly/unknowingly has even resulted the marine environment in vulnerable condition at many places in the world. The tremendous task that the marine biotechnologist can do today is not only to develop techniques to conserve and protect the marine resources but also to enhance productivity of biomass on sustainable basis for its judicious use. However, today we are not sure whether further enhancement of total world fisheries catches will be possible in the future inorder to meet the surplus demand of food. There are several ways to answer these problems. First we need to know the different uses of the biomass actually fished (huge reservoirs of molecules of organic substances including enzymes, fats, etc.) and second we need to grow the living species in captive condition. In both approaches, enhancement and improvement of the product are linked to the biotechnological methods and processes that are put in use particularly when we do mass cultivation of marine organisms. In order to make biotechnological tools viable and profitable it is necessary to devise many innovative ideas and tricks so that the cost investment in the technique can be drastically reduced. In recent-past another severe problem that marine fisheries has faced is large destruction of sea farms due to wide spread pathogenic organism (marine viruses, bacteria or parasites) about which we know very little. Now there is an urgent need that biotechnology can do something to tackle such problems. Biotechnology plays a very important role in revealing the complexities prevailing in marine biodiversity and environmental management, also. In recent-past considerable progress has been made in using rapid and sensitive methods for determining biological responses to human-induced changes in the environment. Many of these methods now use molecular probes, nucleic acids, immuno-reagents, enzymatic biosensors etc for such studies. Another big challenge for marine biotechnologists will be the possibility of using sophisticated biological tools for managing marine ecosystem. Maintenance of natural production of beneficial species on sustainable account and rearing the same in captive condition for enhancing the production are the major bottle necks in fisheries sector where biotechnology has a definite role to play. Today the domains covered by marine biotechnologies are vast and range over various overlapping disciplines, from the molecular approaches of developmental biology and biodiversity to the chemistry of natural substances. New areas are fast developing in this field to establish molecular concept. In this article attempts are made to review the recent progress done in the various areas of marine biotechnology viz molecular biology and transgenic animals, natural products and process, aquaculture, developmental biology, biology of cell factories bioremediation, extremophiles and host pathogen interaction, biodiversity, environmental adaptations and lastly biomarkers and viruses.

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