Red Biotechnology:-
Different techniques of biotechnology are playing a promising role in the identification of various diseases. They are making it possible to understand how the human body responds to drugs. These techniques have also developed more effective medicines. Red biotechnology is the field of biotechnology which is a cluster of many scientific techniques which are applied to the medical field. Red biotechnology includes genomics, genetic engineering and pharmacogenics. It uses substances which naturally produce in the human body such as proteins and various other enzymes to fight against infections or diseases. Red biotechnology also uses substances from plant or animal cells and produce medicines for the human health.

Biotechnology is the part of science and is very old. In the beginning simple techniques of biotechnology were used to make beer cheese by using micro-organisms. Modern of biotechnology was introduced when structure of DNA was discovered in 1953. DNA is a molecule which encodes genetic information for all the living organisms.

Red biotechnology uses the techniques of genetic engineering and genomics. These techniques are used for medical and pharmaceutical purposes. Biotechnology techniques are expanding in health care in four many areas that are medicines, gene therapy, diagnostics and making of vaccines. The medicines which are developed through biotechnology techniques use proteins. These proteins help the body to fight against various diseases. Different strands of genetic material are brought together to make medicines. Such genetically engineered medicines are available in Europe and in United States of America for treating the diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, anemia and hepatitis and for many other diseases. Diagnostics which develop through biotechnology are used to identify many diseases. For example, blood is screened to detect HIV or hepatitis. Gene therapy gives the opportunity of treating the disorders in the human body. Scientists replace the defected genes with the healthy ones. This technique works in the sense that it transfers the healthy gene into the human body and replaces the hereditary genetic disorder. Vaccines are developed by using the techniques of both biotechnology and genomics. They use viruses which are killed or weak to introduce antigens into the body.

Tuberculosis and red Biotechnology:-

Tuberculosis is an ancient disease which is caused by the bacterium, mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is the major cause of death in Africa. This disease usually attacks the lungs but other parts of the body can also be infected with this disease. Infection spreads from people to people by coughing or sneezing. So in this disease, a patient must adopt precautionary measures to protect other people from infection.

Scientific improvements in the making of drugs of this disease are strengthening. Biotechnology techniques are making it easy to treat TB and making the duration of the treatment very less. Less frequent treatments are getting much attention and are more accessible and easy to use. Much of the credit goes to the longer acting rifamycins. It is a family of TB drugs which is given to the patient to get cure from the disease. After much unsuccessful researches for decades in the treatment of TB, now advances have been made in the immuno-biology, molecular biology and gene therapy and have given the hope to the TB patients to be healthy again. Scientists have developed new tuberculosis vaccines. They got complete success over the disease tuberculosis when they mapped the whole genomic sequence of mycobacterium tuberculosis in 1998. Researchers and scientists are making more advances in the research by exploring the genome to extract the specific information. This genomic information will allow the researchers to identify new targets of drugs; will make the diagnosis speedy and treatment and vaccines. The development of vaccine has been made more advanced by providing new information about the human immune response to the disease. The response is observed on the balance between humoral and cellular level particularly. All this information will make possible to improve the response of patients against the disease.

Other revolutionary approaches have also been made in the treatment of the disease. DNA vaccines were applied recently on small animals and showed great improvement and reserved results on large animals. Other technique, recombinant gene vectors, was introduced with vaccinia viruses in mice. They showed tremendous improvement in the treatment of the TB. Other vaccines are also being developed and are experimented on small animals including the vaccines like non-pathogenic mycobacteria.

About Author / Additional Info: