The property of DNA to replicate and reproduce and to have a sequence also called as coding sequence for mRNA and ultimately for protein. The most important feature of DNA is if DNA coding for protein is from one organism is copy and paste in another it will express there to. This feature is manipulated for benefit of humans using technique called recombinant DNA Technology using which lots of improvements are done in agriculture, health care sector and industrial sector.

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COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Abbottabad
Course title and code Industrial Biotechnology
Assignment number 02
Assignment title Application Of Genetic Engineering In IndustrialMicrobiology And
Biotechnology
Submitted by Zohaib Hussain
Registration number Sp13-bty-001
Submitted to Dr. Humaira Ayub
Date of submission Saturday, April 23, 2016

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Application Of Genetic Engineering In Industrial Microbiology
And Biotechnology
The property of DNA to replicate and reproduce and to have a sequence also called as coding
sequence for mRNA and ultimately for protein. The most important feature of DNA is if DNA
coding for protein is from one organism is copy and paste in another it will express there to. This
feature is manipulated for benefit of humans using technique called recombinant DNA
Technology using which lots of improvements are done in agriculture, health care sector and
industrial sector.
1. Production of Industrial Enzymes
Genetically engineered bulk enzymes are in food industry (baking, starch manufacture, fruit
juices), the animal feed industry, in textile manufacture, and in detergents. Many companies
manufacture these enzymes e.g. Novo company
The advantages of using engineered enzymes are as follows:
 Pure Enzyme Production.
 Highly Specific for their target.
 New novel enzymes which generally not available can be produce.
 Bulk production ability.
 Reduced energy consumption and waste.
 Use of any type of raw material (juice industry).
 Increase shelf life of final product causing less loss of food (baking industry).
 Reduced use of chemicals in the production process (starch industry).
 Reduction in release of phosphorus to the environment (animal feed industry).
Examples
Chymosin used in the manufacture of cheese. . It is produced by genetic engineering results in
more pure predictable and exactly same as of original, preferred by vegetarians and some
religious organizations. Bovine Somatotropin (BST) is a growth hormone produced by the
pituitary glands of cattle and it helps adult cows produce milk. It is produced by genetic
engineering in E. coli results in enhancement of milk production preferred by milk producers.

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2. Enhancing the activities of Industrial Enzymes
Through protein engineering it has been possible to enhance the properties of proteins to make
them
 More stable to denaturation
Many industrial processes at high temperatures unfold the proteins and cause them to denature.
Disulphide bonds helps them to stabilize are usually added by engineering cysteine in any
desired positions, results in increased stability to temperatures, organic solvents and extremes of
pH. An example is disulphide bonds are seen in xylanase.
 More active in their biocatalytic ability.
Enzyme 3D conformation is responsible for specific property by manipulating active site by
protein engineering we can increase the activity of the enzyme. Example is change in active site
conformation enzyme tRNA synthase from Bacillus stearothermophilus.
3. Engineered Products or Activities Used for the Enhancement of Human
Health
Engineered health care products and activities can be divided into
 Replace or supplement proteins produced by the human body in insufficient quantities or not
produced at all.
 Replacement of a defective gene.
 Treatment of diseases.
 Prevention of disease, i.e., vaccines.
 Diagnosis of diseases.
4. Genetically engineered plants
Plants have been engineered for the production and introduction of many new desirable
properties. The development of the transgenic organisms reduce the time to develop the new
varieties of plant as compared to conventional breeding method requires more than 10-20 years
to develop new varieties.
 Engineering Plants for Insect Resistance
Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) strains produce proteins called endotoxins, that have insecticidal
action. This has led to their use as insecticides, and more recently to genetically modified crops

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e.g. tobacco, cotton, and tomato using Bt genes. Transgenic maize and cotton containing Bacillus
thuringiensis cry genes account over 26% of the global area of transgenic crops in 2003.
 Genetically Engineering Plants to Survive Water and Salt Stress
Introduction of new trait to plants to increase their habitat range e.g. taits for salt tolerant, cold
heat and drought tolerance etc. Trehalose which protects organisms form damage to desiccation
plants does not accumulate this material much so a bacterial gene genes otsA and otsB for
Trehalose biosynthesis were introduced into indica rice. To obtain either tissue-specific or stress-
inducible expression, two different constructs were made. In one, the fusion gene, with the
promoter of rbcS, direct the gene product to the chloroplast and when gene was placed under the
control of an abscisic acid– inducible promoter the OtsA, OtsB enzyme fusion remains in the
cytosol. Agrobacterium is used as a vector. The transgenic rice contained three to nine fold high
amount of trehalose than the nontransgenic rice. In transgenic rice it is observed that trehalose
act as regulatory material that affect the expression of gene linked with carbon metabolism and
ion uptake.
 Engineering Plants for Pathogenic Microbe Resistance
Anti-fungal proteins are engineer into plants such as the gene coding for chitinase, an enzyme
which hydrolyzes chitin, a polymer of the amino sugar N-acetyl glucosamine. Chitinase gene
from bean has been cloned into tobacco where chitinase stopped the attack by the fungus,
Rhizoctonia solani. Resistance to viral diseases Transgenic tobacco expressing the coat protein
(capsid) gene of tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is resistant to TMV. Resistance is the result of the
interaction with virus uncoating by the expressed coat protein. Other such examples exist in
TMV, cucumber mosaic virus, alfalfa mosaic virus, and several potato viruses. Papaya gets
severe damage caused by papaya ringspot virus (PRSV). The introduction in 1998 of transgenic
papaya cultivars with a transgene that expressed a PRSV coat protein saved the Hawaiian papaya
industry. Transgenic plants have been engineered with a variety of other sequences, encoding
either viral proteins or RNAs that confer virus resistance.
4. Modification of Plant Consumer Products
Genetic engineering has been used to modify the plant food which comes to the consumer
 Maintenance of Hardness and Delayed Ripeness in Fruits
Arctic Apples apples that contain a nonbrowning trait introduced through biotechnology. They
were developed through a process of genetic engineering and precision breeding by Okanagan

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Specialty Fruits. Specifically, gene silencing reduces the expression of polyphenol oxidase
(PPO), thus preventing the fruit from browning.
 Engineering Sweetness into Foods
Monellin is a protein which is 3,000 times sweeter than sucrose by weight; it is naturally
obtained from the red berries of the West African plant, Dioscoreophyllum comminsii Diels, and
has been expressed in yeast.
Others are
 Modification of Starch for Industrial Purposes
 Modifying Flower Pigmentation and Delaying Wilting and Abscision in Flowers
 Modification of Nutritional Capabilities of Crops
 Engineering Vitamin A into Rice
Golden rice was created by transforming rice with three beta-carotene biosynthesis genes:
psy (phytoene synthase) and lyc (lycopene cyclase) both from daffodil (Narcissus
pseudonarcissus), and crt1 from the soil bacterium Erwinia uredovora. The plant
endogenous enzymes process the lycopene to beta-carotene in the endosperm, giving the
rice the distinctive yellow color which gave it the name ‘golden’.
 Engineering Amino Acids into Legumes and Cereals
 Modifying Fats and Oils for Various Purposes
5. Transgenic animals and plants as biological fermenters
Transgenic animals and plants have been used to produce high-quality pharmaceutical
substances or diagnostics. The procedure is known as pharming, molecular farming or gene
pharming and the transgenic plants or animals used are sometimes referred to as animal or plant
‘bioreactors’ or ‘fermentors’. Therapeutically active proteins already on the market are usually
produced in bacteria, fungi, or animal cell cultures. The protein encoded by the transgene is
secreted into the animal’s milk, eggs or blood or even urine, and then collected and purified.
Livestock such as cattle, sheep, goats, chickens, rabbits and pigs have already been modified in
this way to produce several useful proteins and drugs. Pharming has following advantages
 Lower drug costs
 Faster, more flexible manufacturing
 Drugs unavailable any other way
 New value-added agricultural products