Introducing the Concept of Life Sciences

The addition of 80 million people a year to an already overpopulated world of nearly 6 billion people continues to place unprecedented pressures on social and biological systems globally. The fact is, the world’s current population is depleting the living systems on which life depends, which poses significant challenges for continued economic and social growth.

In the next 20 years, people will place a much greater value on resources such as clean water, clean air, a stable global climate, productive land, biological diversity, and healthy and secure communities. As members of this steadily growing family of 6 billion people, we need to begin thinking about assuring the future welfare of humanity -- for ourselves and for generations to come.

Much of the world already is looking to science to provide innovative solutions, and researchers are beginning to think about how we can answer and meet key questions and challenges such as these:

• If food already grows everywhere food can grow -- how can we grow even more?
• What level of population can the world sustain? At what level of technology?
• At what impact to the environment?
• Can we impact the quality of peoples lives globally by addressing unmet medical needs and illnesses that have no cures?
• By linking agriculture and health, what science-based nutritional products are conceivable?

The answer to these questions lies in the life sciences. The concept of life sciences is a recent one that is based on meeting the food and health needs of a rapidly expanding world, while recognizing the importance of environmental sustainability.

Life sciences is about trying to meet these unprecedented challenges by recognizing, developing, utilizing and managing the interconnection of several different disciplines - agriculture, pharmaceuticals and food. The term "life sciences" describes an interconnected system that shares common goals and technologies.

The common goals are to help people around the world lead longer, healthier lives, at costs that they and their nations can afford and without continued environmental degradation.

The shared technologies are those of advanced bioscience, including genomics -- a group of technologies that dramatically increases the speed and power of genetic research. Understanding gene sequences and functions permits a dramatically faster, cheaper development of knowledge that can be practically applied to solve complex human problems in many areas, such as agriculture, nutrition, health, material sciences and environmental sustainability.

Researchers are in the early stages of an extremely powerful and probably inexorable process to understand and utilize this emerging technology. They are using biotechnology and genomics to develop products that integrate food, agriculture and health. Researchers can add traits for producing healthier foods into crops, erasing the line between agriculture and food. Or, taking that one step further, they can add health-enhancement traits into crops, erasing the line between agriculture and pharmaceuticals

"An example in pharmaceuticals is adding a substance that lowers cholesterol into a food crop. Then the crop actually contains a product that will help you lower your cholesterol. In a case like this, you have bridged agriculture, nutrition and pharmaceuticals," said Hendrik Verfaillie, former president of Monsanto Company.

Researchers have worked for years to discover and develop the scientific technologies that we utilize and from which we benefit today. The exciting thing about life sciences - which runs the continuum from agriculture at one end through food and nutrition to health and wellness at the other end -- is that it's in its infancy, and one key to its success is capturing the interest of the brilliant young thinkers who ensure our world's future.

It is important that we help people globally begin thinking about addressing the critical needs and issues that are affecting us now and will continue into the future. After all, we are all depending on life sciences to help us meet the food and health needs of our rapidly expanding world in an environmentally sustainable manner.

The "technology" in biotechnology...

Biotechnology is a collection of tools used to manipulate molecules that control plant and animal characteristics. Biotechnology is the same as applied biology and is not a new science. It has long been used in several industries. Over the years, companies in the beer and wine industries have used yeast and bacteria to convert sugar molecules into alcohol through a process called fermentation. Pharmaceutical companies also use bacteria and other living organisms to produce naturally occurring molecules that are used to treat a wide variety of diseases. In agriculture, selective breeding has been used to develop improved plants and animals.

Unfortunately natural medicines often occur in very low amounts in nature. Much research has been performed to increase and control the production of these important molecules. Selective breeding also is slow to produce improved plants and animals with the desired characteristics, often requiring years of effort. Using the tools provided by modern biotechnology, scientists are now able to accomplish in months what formerly took decades. This is the main significance of biotechnology.

Biotechnology Tools

An understanding of the tools of biotechnology involves some knowledge of the molecules that make up living cells. For example the information that controls every cell resides in a group of molecules known as DNA. Very long DNA molecules are condensed into structures called chromosomes that are located in the cell nucleus. Inherited characteristics depend upon which chromosomes are received from your parents.

Genes are specific regions of DNA that contain information required to produce proteins. Each protein in life is produced by its own gene. It is estimated that man has over 100,000 genes. Inheritance of genes is random, which is the reason that selective breeding takes so long.

Over the past forty years, scientists conducting basic research funded by public agencies such as the National Institutes of Health have discovered how DNA works. In doing so, biotechnology tools, such as recombinant DNA technology, have been developed. Using recombinant DNA technology, scientists are able to isolate single genes and insert them into other cells. Gene insertion has yielded new and improved medicines and agricultural products.

A well known example of applied biology that utilized recombinant DNA technology involved identification and isolation of the gene for human insulin and its insertion into yeast to produce human insulin by fermentation, a tool developed by the beer industry. Human insulin was one of the first examples of a new medicine being produced by modern biotechnology and resulted in the replacement of pig insulin for patients with diabetes. The basic research was conducted at the University of California and at the City of Hope in Duarte, California. A new company (Genentech) was formed to develop this discovery and to produce enough human insulin for clinical trials. Cooperation between Genentech and Eli Lilly was required to produce large quantities of human insulin to make it available to diabetic patients. Now diabetics can receive human insulin for much longer periods of time than was previously possible.

Recombinant DNA technology has been utilized to start an entire industry in which clinically important proteins that cannot be isolated are produced in large quantities for the first time ever and have become important tools in fighting disease. In each case, the transition of these discoveries from the laboratory to the market has required enormous intellectual and financial resources and cooperation between basic science and industry.