Biotechnology is an upcoming popular career option for many students. It is one of the rapidly growing areas of science that is catching up with youngsters of today. Biotechnology is the use of the 2 most important areas of science – biology and technology. Integrating these two areas is beneficial in many areas of medicine, agriculture and allied industries and chemical industries. Planning, production and management are some of the areas in which biotechnologists can be employed.

Since biotechnology is a vast field, there are many opportunities that are available for students in this stream. Some of areas in which students can work are given below.

1. Gene therapy – identifying the various genes in all living beings and helping solve the various problems which are associated with it. For example: Diabetes, sickle cell disease, down syndrome etc.
2. Enzyme engineering and technology – it is the application of modifying an enzyme’s structure to produce new metabolites. This area of study is useful in chemical industry, pharmaceuticals and food or agriculture additives.
3. DNA technologies – the name biotechnology is very synonymous to DNA and its associated areas of research. DNA fingerprinting, sequencing of genomes and using new molecular markers are some of the things which one can work on in this area.
4. Drugs and vaccines – biotechnology is vastly used by pharmaceutical companies to help come up with better medicines for curing ailments.
5. Nanobiotechnology – one of the newer advancements in the field of science is nanotechnology and combining it with biotechnology will help make many areas of science easy. For example: complicated operations on humans can be made less painful, thereby eliminating the fear associated with it.

Of the many areas in which biotechnology can be used, the above were just a brief introduction to the vast world of biotechnology.