Getting Cultured: The Perfect Marriage Between Technology and Biology

A Recent Magazine Publication

A while back, I was a part of a team that published Tech Today, an electronic magazine about all things tech. As an article writer and magazine designer, I got the amazing opportunity to research any field I found interesting. I chose to examine biotechnology. To this extent, I gained experience in various graphic design platforms such as the Adobe Suite collection, interviewed various professors and researchers at UT Austin, and learned about the history of various genomic sequencing technologies. The magazine can be viewed on Issu and MagCloud. The website about our magazine can be accessed here. My individual page and blog sharing insights on this experience can be accessed here. Below is an at-a-glance image of the first two pages of my feature article in the magazine, and my article is found below. I hope you enjoy it!

In today’s rapidly changing and adapting world, using computerized methods to analyze biological issues and find improved antidotes is vital. Biotechnology is the rapidly changing field of medical science which encompasses this futuristic approach of combining life sciences with technology. The European Federation of Biotechnology defines biotechnology as the integration of microbiology, biochemistry, and engineering sciences to develop technological applications of microorganisms.

The term biotechnology was first used by Hungarian Engineer Karl Ereky in 1919, but the process has been in use since the advent of human civilization. From developing a variety of food products such as cheese, yogurt, and yeasts, to creating vaccines and new processes like pasteurization, biotechnology has touched lives in multitudinous forms.

The major developments in biotechnology started with the discovery of the nucleus in cells by Robert Brown, followed by the development of the double helix model of DNA made by Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, and Francis Crick. The emergence of biotechnology was also sped up through the popularity of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and finally the discovery that genes were linked to inheritance, made by Gregor Mendel in 1865.

The immense diversity and rapid evolution of technology allows modifications of biological systems in numerous ways. Biotechnology is influencing the developments in marine life, agriculture, medical sciences, and pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Adrianne Rosales, assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Texas (UT), combines the knowledge of materials science, biotechnology, and chemical engineering to develop polymer systems that mimic the properties of human tissues.

“I love that it’s interdisciplinary, that [there are] multiple sides to every problem,” Dr. Rosales said. “So that ultimately, we’re trying to improve quality of life for people, or understand how [a] disease works better so other people can design therapies too.”

The development of data science techniques has resulted in the growth of bioinformatics, which is the science of collecting and analyzing complex biological data through the collaboration of computer scientists, microbiologists, and mathematicians. Bioinformatics deals with massive databases containing data of millions of diseases and experiments for cures, such as genetic diseases like Huntington’s disease (HD) or sickle cell anemia. Dr. Chandrajit Bajaj, Director of the Center for Computational Visualization and Professor of Computer Science at UT believes the field of biomedicine has benefited from advances in the computational science.

“Biomedicine is one of the biggest sources of data and also one of the biggest users of machine learning techniques, mathematics, and computer science,” Dr. Chandrajit said. “So it’s natural that you fall into the biggest source of information, challenges, data, and that’s what got me in it.”

Experiments in biotechnology and other fields are conducted all the time. Dr. Dhivya Arasappan, Assistant Professor and Research Scientist at the College of Natural Sciences at UT, commented that the experiments that have used more precise equipment have faster data analysis, and get better results due to the latest software and hardware used.

“Every day you hear on the news about medical advances that are coming out,” Dr. Dhivya said. “Innovations are happening all the time due to new medical devices.”

Biotechnology is a field with new and innovative concepts to be explored every day. Concepts such as genome editing with CRISPR-Cas9 or determining the nucleotide sequence of DNA with Sanger Sequence are some of the recent research.

“There’s always something new to do,” Rosales said. “I find that it’s a creative field. People are constantly coming up with new solutions.”

CRISPR-Cas9 is a recent, highly debated genome editing tool used to remove, alter, and add sections of DNA sequences. This technique raises many ethical questions regarding genome safety, mutant organisms and the authority to conduct these processes. Hence this fastest, cheapest, and most accurate tool of genetic manipulation is leading to lot of controversy.

Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) helps to identify variations in lengths of DNA fragments cut by restriction enzymes. Identifying variation helps in forensic investigations as well as in mapping hereditary diseases.

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is used to make copies of a DNA segment. Having thousands to millions of copies of a DNA segment is used in the identification and detection of infectious diseases and for research in molecular genetics, such as genetic testing, which identifies changes in chromosomes, genes, or proteins.

Sanger sequencing, also known as the chain termination method, allows for sequencing and determination of the nucleotide sequence of DNA, is a beneficial technique for forensic and genetic applications.

As per discussion with Dr. Arasappan, numerous groundbreaking experiments are being conducted at UT using technologies like CRISPR Cas9, RFLP, PCR, and Sanger Sequencing, which help in accuracy and efficiency of the experiments. Dr. Arasappan worked to sequence the genome of Rhazya, a plant that grows in arid, desert-like conditions, and has medicinal properties used explicitly for anti-cancer medication.

“We sequence the plant and assemble the genome, which means coming up with entire strands of DNA that make up the plant genome,” Dr. Arasappan said. “I did all of that from scratch. I think my experiment was successful because compared to a lot of other plant genomes, we were able to get a very closed, completed genome. You might think that when people assemble genomes if it has 22 chromosomes, you get perfectly 22 strings. That’s not always the case. Most of the times, you get lots of little pieces. Our genome was pretty close to complete. We didn’t have a lot of little pieces, so I thought that was successful.”

Dr. Bajaj works in an interdisciplinary field of science where he combines knowledge from computer science and biology. Working in such an interdisciplinary field allows for lots of new interactions, enhances learning, and passing of information from generations which leads to quicker innovations.

“Academia gives you the freedom of not only doing what you like but meeting lots of very bright people,” Dr. Bajaj said. “Be it older than you and sometimes younger than you. So, the challenge is that you have to impart that further. Academia gives you the opportunity to research and educate because you don’t live forever and you want to make sure we all lead a progressive life. That’s what keeps me going.”

However, the field of biotech has its own challenges. Since it is so closely related to other fields, scientists have to learn new things, besides what they are specialized in.

“Working in this field is a challenge, but at the same time, it builds one’s confidence,” Dr. Bajaj said. The challenge is that one is naturally curious about things one doesn’t understand. However, the challenge [is] that there are many things I don’t understand, but if I’m told that this is something important and I should understand it, then I have the confidence that I can focus and can understand, whether it be entirely out of my expertise. …Be it in math. Be it in physics. Be it in chemistry. Be it in biology. That keeps us going. Curiosity and enthusiasm to combat the unknown! Knowing fully well, that you are only probably scratching a tip of a whale’s fin while the whale is full of problems we don’t understand.”

Another challenge is keeping up with the latest technologies and innovations. Dr. Arasappan talked about how as she was growing up, technologies related to sequencing DNA were the latest trends.

“Things keep changing,” Dr. Arasappan said. “NGS came up when I was entering my second job. So in my first job, I hadn’t done anything related to NGS. But in my second job, I had to learn it all.”

Managing the long timelines involved in testing and approval of new inventions and technologies poses its own challenge. There are many hoops that scientists have to jump through in order to get their products validated.

“It can take a long time to get the technology commercially or federally approved,” Dr. Rosales said. “The FDA has to regulate anything that’s going into the human body. Moreover, sometimes those timelines can be ten years, so it goes through many rounds of validation. It starts in the lab, then it goes through animal studies, and goes through different phases of human clinical trials. Sometimes it is a challenge to anticipate how your technology is directly translated into human beings.”

Assuming that biotechnology is simple is also a problem. More profound knowledge, messy experiments, talking to lots of new people, and failures are needed to have successful and meaningful trials.

“Sometimes the expectation is that someone will push a button and everything will get resolved, and you’ll get a beautiful answer,” Dr. Arasappan says. “Communicating with a biologist who doesn’t understand the computational challenge…it’s not perfect. Also, then understanding their language, understanding what they want and communicating with different specialists is also a challenge.”

Dr. Arasappan sees biotechnology as an intriguing and unfolding field, giving it credit as an alliance of many different disciplines, allowing for exploration of the unknown.

“It’s a great combination of different skills. There’s a lot of interesting applications, which are very relevant to the current environment,” Arasappan said. “Lots of people are generating all this data, and then they don’t know what to do with it. There’s high demand for a person who has a mix of computation and biology. It’s a lucrative career. Anything related to data science amounts of data and parsing it, those are currently very lucrative professions. That’s a practical reason to apply.”

Biotechnology is an emerging field that allows scientists to explore things never traversed before. It gives people the opportunity to eventually fulfill their dreams of working on deadly diseases like cancer and contribute back to the community.

“I always used to tell people that I want to work on cancer; I want to help cure cancer,” Dr. Rosales said. “However, I didn’t know what that meant. My family doesn’t have any scientists or engineers, so I picked a major, and for college, I ended up in engineering. But, I started moving more and more towards biotechnology and biomedical applications because I thought it was a chance to impact and change people’s lives that way.”