ABSTRACT
Biotechnology has been known for decades, if not for centuries, and as the name implies, it is the technology in science based on or involving biology. More precisely, it is the application of organisms or their subcellular components to create new substances or organisms (Smith and Lewis, 1991). The traditional methods in the old days were by asexual reproduction, or by crossbreeding animals and cross pollination of plants. This science of genetic rearrangements was propelled to grandiose proportions by the development of laboratory techniques in the 1970s in recombinant DNA processes, better known as genetic engineering. Whereas the conventional methods of breeding are only possible between animals and plants of similar species, in genetic engineering, gene transfer can be done across barriers of species differences. What in the past was considered impossible is now possible. At present it seems that most people associate biotechnology always with genetic engineering, the newest modern technology of the third millennium. It is also known under various analogous names, such as genetic modification (GM) for creation of genetically modified, transgenic organisms (GMOs), gene splicing and recombinant DNA.
