Opportunities unlimited
Arun Athmanathan
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With its impact encompassing almost all aspects of life, biotechnology is truly the stuff of dreams.
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EXCITING AREA OF STUDY: Bioinformatics is a multidisciplinary field offering a number of different career opportunities.
Bio is the buzzword in scientific and business circles, and a regular feature in the media.
Whether it is talk of Biocon's profits and Kiran Mazumdar Shah's recognition or of Bangalore and Hyderabad competing to set up Biotech parks or of Bush's calls for banning stem-cell cloning, not a day goes by when we do not hear of biotech in some respect.
So, let us explore a few aspects of biotechnology and see why it is going to make such an exciting future for biotechnologists as well as for everyone else.
To do so, we must first understand exactly what comprises biotechnology or rather, if you consider the number of fields within it, bio-technologies. Combining a number of definitions biotechnology can be termed as "The application of biological sciences, usage and manipulation of biological materials or living matter, towards betterment of human life". Biotechnology contains a number of parallel fields:
Bio-informatics
It is a crossover field between IT and the life sciences. It deals with computation of information carried by biological systems in an effective manner, for storage and retrieval. Coming in the wake of the IT boom, it is perhaps the most popular field within biotechnology. Key problems bio-informaticians set out to solve (other than how to pronounce their designation) include calculating and simulating the exact three-dimensional structure of proteins and correlating gene-sequence to protein structure.
Getting into it
Bioinformatics is a multidisciplinary field. A number of different career opportunities exist for people of different backgrounds. A background in either IT/programming or the life sciences, with suitable exposure to the other, is called for. For details on companies involved, designation and background requirements, log on to www.biospectrumindia.com/content/careers/10306091.asp
Centres for research and training
A number of institutes in India are currently carrying out bio-informatics or computational biology research. These include the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and the National Institute of Immunology in Delhi. For more information: www.bioinformaticscentre.org
Bioengineering/biomedical engineering
Another multidisciplinary field, bioengineering deals with the application of existing engineering principles to study, mimic, aid or even replace biological systems. It overlaps several engineering disciplines, including computer science, mechanical engineering, electronics and chemical engineering.
A few exciting branches include Biomechanics (study of the mechanical properties of living tissue, notably muscle and bone); Medical imaging/data collection (finding new and improved ways to derive information about the function of various parts of the body); Tissue engineering (converting cells to tissue - a problem that requires structural considerations); and nano-biosciences.
With the growing industrial importance of Biotechnology, several universities offer B.E and B.Tech. Foremost among these are those at the IITs and at Anna University, Chennai.
Pursuit of pure science degrees is also a good way to enter the field.
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