Biotechnology

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Overview

Biotechnology is the use of living systems, and increasingly the direct editing of genetic information, to make medicines, crops, materials and treatments. Recent advances include CRISPR gene editing, mRNA vaccines and research into slowing biological ageing. The field matters because it can relieve disease and hunger, and because it raises questions that no technical expert can answer alone: who gets access, which changes are acceptable, and who decides when a change can be inherited by later generations.

Context

The structure of DNA was described in 1953, and the Human Genome Project produced a reference sequence declared essentially complete in 2003. Early genetic engineering raised enough concern that scientists met at Asilomar in California in 1975 to discuss safeguards. Costs of reading DNA have since fallen steeply, and tools for writing and editing it have followed.