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Every day, a significant percentage of the world's human population consumes food products such as bread, yoghurt or cheese and drinks beverages like beer or wine. These products are present on our tables for a long period of time, but only since 1919 word “biotechnology” has been used[1]. The meaning of this word changed over time, but now it is considered that biotechnology “involves the use of living systems, organisms, or parts of organisms to manipulate natural processes in order to develop products, systems, or environments to benefit people.”[2] (New Zealand Technology Curriculum, 1995). Despite a long history of this branch, the real development of this field took place after the discovery of DNA in 1953[3] and the rise of genetic engineering in the 1970s[3]. Thereafter many pivotal inventions were made with the use of biotechnology. One of the first and the most important invention was the usage of Escherichia coli bacteria for insulin production, which greatly facilitated the receipt of this product, what, in effect, reduced its price and enabled everyone to obtain this medicine[4]. In this work, I'll focus on the usage of biotechnology in producing things that the average person possess in the kitchen because this section is still primarily on that field.
The idea of biotechnology per se is very old. First mentions are dated at 6000 BC[3]. Then the Egyptians and Sumerian people were using microorganisms to produce bread, wine and beer. They were far from understanding how this process works, but they knew from experience what to do in order to obtain a proper result. In fact, there are a few legends which contain an explanation of the way that they discovered this phenomenon, but due to the age of these reports, it is impossible to precisely determine the place and time of the creation of bread, wine and beer.
Next important breakthrough took place about a year 4000 BC in China when this civilization used bacterias producing lactic acid to obtain cheese and yoghurt[5]. Furthermore, this nation created other biotechnology products, such as soya sauce (about 300 BC) and first insecticide - powdered chrysanthemum (about 100 BC)[5].
Further development of food biotechnology occurred in present times – after 1972 when Paul Berg created the first recombinant DNA molecule[3], and 1973, when first living organism with recombinant DNA appeared[3]. The biggest difference between present biotechnology and this ancient is that modern biotechnology is significantly connected with genetic engineering, which making this branch very flexible because we can adapt bacteria to produce exactly what we want, as it was in the case of insulin production[4].
Bread is considered as the oldest product of biotechnology. It is impossible to locate the source of bread because we can find traces of bread production all over the world. First written or painted sources, however, come from Mesopotamia and Egypt, where we can find for example paintings presenting grinding grain. From preserved sources, we know that there were mainly 5 kinds of bread: wheat white bread (considered as luxurious one), dark wholemeal bread, bread for an army, bread for plebs and the worst one – bread for slaves, which was often composed by offals[6]. Nowadays bread is common in every house all over the world. To produce bread people use Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker’s yeast)[7][8] - they are used in baking bread to make it leave because in their fermentation they break down the sugar into CO2, which is gas that makes bread structure porous[8].
The same yeasts that are used to produce bread are used in manufacturing beer too. In contrast to bread, beer in ancient times differed much from a beer that we know. In ancient Mesopotamia, only women were in charge of manufacturing beer. They produced special bread (which was consisted of germinating grains of barley and wheat with spices and topped with dates or honey juice), then put it into a clay pot with water and heated this mixture with rosemary. Then they waited until fermentation was done[9]. Today beer is made completely different, but this two varied kinds of beer have one thing in common: Saccharomyces cerevisiae or Saccharomyces carlsbergensis (barm) must be used because they are crucial for fermentation which can’t happen without this yeasts[7].
The last but not the least one from this triplet is wine. Three domains of this drink were the Middle East, Egypt and China[10]. The origin of the wine culture is considered to be Georgia – people there put a lot of work into viticulture, cultivating the tradition of vineyards passing from generation to generation. The yeasts used to ferment wine are Saccharomyces ellipsoideus[7], so-called wine yeast.
The most known product of milk fermentation is yoghurt – this one was discovered in China by shepherds who after prolonged storage of milk in pots discovered its properties after fermentation[11]. Another milk fermentation product is kefir, firstly obtained by nomadic shepherds in the Caucasus mountains of Eastern Europe, who observed that their milk stored in leather bags turned into a sparkling, creamy drink[12]. Their properties are caused by bacterias: Lactobacillus, Lactococcus, Bifidobacterium[8]. They also contain probiotics, such as Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium bifidum[8], which are very profitable for our health.
There is an old legend – there was an Arabian merchant who put his supply of milk into a pouch made from a sheep's stomach. After a whole day of a journey through the desert, it came out that the rennet in the lining of the pouch combined with the heat of the sun caused the milk to separate into curd and whey. When surprised merchant tasted this strange thing, it came out that it is really delicious[13]. This legend about the origin of cheese is pretty interesting, but it's probably not a truth. It is considered that cheese was firstly created in China by local shepherds. Over the years cheese was improving, especially in Europe (where was brought by Romans who picked up this idea from travellers from Asia) in middle ages, where monks were inventing new kinds of cheese[13]. For manufacturing cheese, there are two main kinds of moulds used: Penicillium roqueforti and Penicillium camemberti[8]. In difference to other types of moulds they are not harmful to human – that's why they are so-called 'noble rot'.
Another Chinese product which contains mould is soy sauce. It wasn't very popular until in 1254 a Buddhist monk returned to Yuasa (Japan) from China with the recipe for vegetables-preserving miso. Its ingredients were soy beans, wheat, salt, and water[14]. But there was one more thing needed to produce this sauce - Aspergillus oryzae[8] (jap. Koji). Because of this fermentation the soy sauce has a wealth of health benefits – it is considered probiotic and some studies have demonstrated that food rich in Koji, like soy sauce, may help prevent cancer.[14]
If an average person would enter his or her own kitchen it is almost impossible that this person would not find any biotechnology product. I strongly believe that the best proof for its quality is that despite the age of this technology it is still developing and we constantly cannot imagine life without products such as bread, yoghurt or cheese. Moreover, products of biotechnology contribute very significant health benefits, such as cancer prevention. Taking it all into consideration I think that biotechnology is a very important branch and constant improvement of it should be definitely supported.
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