Introduction

Definition of biotechnolgy is: The application of science and technology to living organisms, as well as parts, products and models thereof, to alter living or non-living materials for the production of knowledge, goods and services.

In the picture below we can see what are the main areas of research and development.

Biotechnology has been used for more than 6,000 years for lots of interesting and practical purposes: making food such as bread and cheese, preserving dairy products and fermenting beer.  

Although we do not always realise it, biotechnology is a huge part of our everyday lives, from the clothes we wear and how we wash them, the food we eat and the sources it comes from, the medicine we use to keep us healthy and even the fuel we use to take us where we need to go, biotech already plays, and must continue to play, an invaluable role in meeting our needs.

Nowadays there exist five main groups in biotechnological applications, which have been identified by a color system

• Red biotechnology: everything that is related to medicine
  (producing vaccines and antibiotics, developing new drugs, molecular diagnostics techniques, genetic engineering to cure diseases...)

• White biotechnology: also called industrial biotechnology (use of microorganisms in chemicals production, design and production of new materials for daily use (plastics, textiles ...), biofuels...

• Grey biotechnology: applications directly related to the environment (maintenance biodiversity, removing contaminants...)

• Green biotechnology: is focused on agriculture (creating new plant varieties, biofertilizers, biopesticides, in vitro cultivation, cloning plants...) 

• Blue biotechnology: exploitation of sea resources to create products and applications of industrial interest (materials hydrocolloids and gellings are used in food, marker molecules from marine organisms, enzymatically active molecules...)