• April 16, 2024

Biotechnology is a tool that can solve large problems affecting agriculture and nutrition, as new agronomic properties can be introduced to crops to make them more robust, resistant to pests, salt stress, water scarcity and high temperatures derived from climate change; In addition, it allows correcting defects of food through genetic manipulation, for example, the lack of vitamin A in rice and cassava.

Say goodbye to toxins and pests

Agustín López-Munguía Canales , specialist of Institute of Biotechnology of the UNAM He said that genetically modifying food can also have an important impact in terms of public health, besides that it would allow dealing with problems of contamination with fungal toxins, lack of water, soil deterioration, temperature increase or pests.

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As part of the work he does with enzymes he explained that these are a group of proteins that behave as catalysts of the reactions that take place in the cell; He added that all the chemical reactions that occur in living systems are catalysed by the existence of these proteins, which are known as biological catalysts and that allow accelerating the speed of biochemical reactions.

However, how to produce large quantities of the enzymes that the cells produced only for their own benefit? He explained that this limitation was resolved at the beginning of the last century with microbiology and the engineering of fermentations. In this way the production of detergents, together with penicillin, were the first products of industrial microbiology for the benefit of humanity.

Today, virtually any enzyme can be produced through molecular biology tools in a wide variety of models, including bacteria, yeast, fungi, and plants. Today there are many enzymes available and even some areas of the chemical, pharmaceutical and food industries have been able to develop thanks to the availability of enzymes in industrial quantities.

As examples, it should be noted that there would be no delayed milk without the production of the corresponding enzyme and that many second-generation antibiotics, derived from penicillin or cephalosporin, are due to enzymatic transformation processes.

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