We look forward to provide a sense of satisfaction and foresightedness to the students who want to opt biotechnology as their career and those who are already in this field regarding their job prospects after the successful accomplishment of their studies, with this information. Students often come across so many opinions from different sources regarding biotechnology as a career option and often at the end they are totally struck in a web of questions. So, here comes an end to the search regarding "how to get your foot in the door"? As the word implies, biotechnology is a conjugation of two words bio and technology. Biological field was earlier restricted only to the conventional sciences such as zoology, botany, biochemistry, microbiology and other allied fields. But biotechnology is a coveted interdisciplinary, rather multidisciplinary field which has its own charm, and is also dependent on the information and techniques from outside the arena of biology (physics, chemistry, mathematics biomedical engineering, and information technology). There are several different types of biotechnology viz., blue biotechnology deals with marine and aquatic applications of biotechnology while red biotechnology is intended to improve the quality of health care. Green and white biotechnology is applied to agricultural and industrial processes, respectively.

In earlier days, biotechnology mainly referred to zymotechnology of brewing industry, although the former now entails so many other modern disciplines. Biotechnology has made possible the things, which were unattainable before, from animal cloning that created Dolly to stem cell research and gene therapy, from green revolution to modern animal husbandry. It also introduced scientific methods for genetic engineering. In today's definition, we can't cover the biotechnology under a single roof and there are many branches derived form the same videlicet agriculture, plant and animal biotechnology, aquaculture, biofertilizers, biopesticides, crop biotechnology, biotech products including process development, biotechnology for medicinal and aromatic plants, environment biotechnology, food biotechnology, human genetics and genome analysis, medical biotechnology (e.g., vaccines and diagnostics), seri biotechnology and stem cell research. Besides, in forensic science, biotechnology has extended a helping hand. It has been always in the nature of humans to manipulate the organisms to their advantage but at this advanced stage/era, we are also able to manipulate life and materials at the atomic level through nanobiotechnology. Therefore, as a consequence of all these advancements and innumerable advantages, biotechnology has developed over the last two decades as a rapidly growing industry that is offering vast job opportunities to the biotechnologists worldwide.

The work of a biotechnologist is fundamentally scientific and research oriented, which aims at the application of technology to improve the quality of life and develop a variety of end uses. Biotechnologists are therefore involved in production as well as marketing and research. A relatively newer branch of biotechnology is bioinformatics, which is entirely based on computer applications in respect of facilitating hardcore research, database management and ultimately the success of Human genome project (HGP) leading to global knowledge sharing of the efforts. HGP has made ways to the large scale collaborative projects, such as Human Proteome project (HPP) and many others. There has been a focused effort towards the conservation of intellectual property rights (IPR) including patenting and copyrights since then. International cooperation including collaborative projects, students and scientists exchange programs, coming up of great biotechnology parks, enormous funding to research institutions and industries have been granted by the governments of nations worldwide. Thus, in light of the above facts, we could reasonably say that all these contribute a huge impetus to the biotechnology field.

To pursue biotechnology, candidates having background in science at the intermediate level can take up the bachelors and post graduate courses. Depending upon the aptitude and interest, more advanced courses such as PhD and post-doctoral research in biotechnology can also be pursued. In order to jumpstart the biotechnology career, students can also undertake various summer research programs/internships available at leading research labs and other private institutions.

In conclusion, I want to convey that there is no age bar for learning, you should always update yourself of the current goings on, gauge for your aptitude to take up this young science as career, walk for it and ways are always open for the excellence.

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