A Textbook of Molecular Biotechnology

Agriculture has been theorized to have become the dominant way of producing food since the Neolithic Revolution. Through early biotechnology, the earliest farmers selected and bred the best suited crops, having the highest yields, to produce enough food to support a growing population. As crops and fields became increasingly large and difficult to maintain, it was discovered that specific organisms and their by-products could effectively fertilize, restore nitrogen, and control pests. Throughout the history of agriculture, farmers have inadvertently altered the genetics of their crops through introducing them to new environments and breeding them with other plants " one of the first forms of biotechnology. These processes also were included in early fermentation of beer. These processes were introduced in early Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and India, and still use the same basic biological methods. This book describes the role of basic biotechnological tools in various spheres of human society, namely, agriculture, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, nanobiotechnology, proteomics, metagenomics, bioinformatics and Intellectual Property Rights.