Biotechnology: King of Advanced Life Sciences

Father of Biology- Aristotle Father of Botany- Theophrastus Father of Zoology- Aristotle Father of Modern Botany- Linnaeus Father of Taxonomy- Linnaeus Founders of Plant Histology and Anatomy- Grew & Malphigi Father of Cytology- Robert Hooke Father of Modern Cytology- Swanson Father of Genetics- Mendel Father of Modern Genetics- Morgan Father of Plant Breeding- Thomas Fair Child Father of Paleobotany- Adolph Brongniart Father of Evolution- Darwin Father of Plant Physiology- Stephen Hales Father of Algology- Kleps, Fritsch Father of Mycology- Micheli Father of Modern Mycology- de Bary Father of Bacteriology- Leeuwenhoek Father of Medical Bacteriology- Koch Father of Modern Bacteriology- Louis Pasteur Father of Microbiology- Louis Pasteur Father of Plant Pathology- de Bary Father of Mutation Breeding- Muller & Stadler Father of Plant Embryology- Wolff Father of Palynology- Erdtmann Father of Tissue Culture- Haberlandt Father of Enzymology- Buchner Fath...

Author                                          Book Theophrastus                                  Historia Plantarum, Enquiry into Plants. Caspar Bauhin                                A Prodromous Theatri Botanica Linnaeus                                         Systema Nature, Species Plantarum, Philosophia Botanica de Candolle                                    Origin of Cultivated Plants, Prodromus Systematics Naturalis                            ...

Most proteins are enzymes that catalyze the myriad of chemical reactions in cells that are necessary for life; other proteins form structural functions as in bone and muscle. The information for making proteins resides in the sequence of bases in DNA in chromosomes and in organelles such as mitochondria. Converting the information contained in genes into proteins involves two complex processes. Transcription is the first step in which the sequence of bases in a gene is converted into a complementary sequence of bases in a molecule of RNA. Three chemically identical but functionally quite different molecules of RNA are transcribed from DNA: messenger RNA (mRNA) carries the genetic information contained in a gene; transfer RNA (tRNA) and ribosomal RNA (rRNA) are also transcribed from genes but are used to convert the information in the sequence of bases in mRNA into the corresponding sequence of amino acids in a protein. Structure of RNA: RNA is a single-stranded polynucleotide co...

Mutation means any change in the base sequence of DNA. The most common change is a substitution, addition, rearrangement, or deletion of one or more bases. A mutation need not give rise to a mutant phenotype.  A mutagen is a physical agent or chemical reagent that causes mutations. For example, nitrous acid reacts with some DNA bases, changing their chemistry and hydrogen bonding properties, and is a mutagen.  Mutagenesis is the process of producing a mutation. If it occurs in nature without the action of a known mutagen, it is called spontaneous mutagenesis and the resulting mutations are spontaneous mutations. If a mutagen is used, the process is called induced mutagenesis. Types of Mutations: Mutations can be categorized in several ways. One system is based on the nature of the change, specifically on the number of bases changed. Thus, we distinguish a point mutation, in which a single base pair is changed from a multiple mutation, in which two or more base pai...

DNA can be damaged by external agents and by replication errors. Since maintenance of the correct base sequence of DNA and of daughter DNA molecules is essential for hereditary fidelity, repair systems have evolved that restore the correct base sequence. Mi smatch Repair and Methylation of DNA: DNA polymerases occasionally catalyze incorporation of an "incorrect" base that cannot form a hydrogen bond with the template base in the parental strand; such errors usually are corrected by the editing function of these enzymes.  The editing process occasionally fails, so a second system, called mismatch repair, exists for correcting the errors that are not edited out. In mismatch repair, a pair of non-hydrogen-bonded bases (e.g., G . . . T) within a helix are recognized as aberrant and a polynucleotide segment of the daughter strand is excised, thereby removing one member of the unmatched pair.  The resulting gap is filled in by pol I, which presumably uses this "seco...

Problems of Replication:        The replication process needs that each double-helical molecule of DNA produce two identical molecules of DNA. This means that wherever a G-C or A-T base pair occurs in the parental molecule, the identical base pair must occur in the progeny molecules. However, many factors interfere with accurate replication of DNA. If an A should pair with C or G with T as a result of tautomerization, a point mutation (a change in one base pair) will result. Occasionally, a segment of DNA will be replicated more than once (duplication) or a segment may fail to be replicated (deletion). These and other aberrations in DNA replication do occur, but the mechanism of replication has evolved to minimize such mistakes. Semiconservative Replication:         The information in each strand of the double helix acts as the template for the construction of a new double-helical DNA molecule; this is called semiconservative replication sinc...