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  • Essay / New bioengineering technologies: a way to replace traditional practices

    Advanced natural resources are decreasing in quantity and the global climate is warming in part due to greenhouse gas emissions. Bioengineering offers methods to limit the need for hard-to-obtain natural resources in ways that are also more sustainable and better for the environment. Such practices are also economically viable, as being a “green” product or installation has become a strong selling point. GMO bioengineering offers low-cost, low-maintenance methods of environmental cleanup, as well as the production of agricultural and industrial raw materials. Biorefineries, using bioreactors and separators, will replace traditional manufacturing methods by being cleaner, more efficient and cheaper. Medical advances in tissue synthesis and other technologies will provide advanced information about disease and its treatment. The benefits of bioengineering are numerous and the challenge is whether or not companies and governments are willing to invest in research to make cheap, clean bioproduction a reality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayMany consider life manipulation to be a superpower. However, people from diverse backgrounds have used this superpower across the world. Beginning in Western Europe and the Middle East with soil erosion (André Evette et al., 2009) and agricultural crops (Zeder, 2008), bioengineering is anchored in the history of humanity. Today, bioengineers use this superpower to exploit life in ways that benefit the financial means. production, human health care and the environment. Bioengineering involves the use of natural or artificial products and organisms in medical and industrial settings. The applications of such engineering are vast, with socio-economic and political implications at every turn. Biological engineering technology (biotechnology) is estimated to have the potential to become a multi-billion dollar industry (Dianne Ahmann and John R. Dorgan, 2007a). Today, many products are already bioengineered, from eco-friendly inks to compostable bags and paper coffee cups that are still strong and water-resistant. There are technologies that borrow directly from nature. Fabrics that mimic the surface of a lotus leaf to create water, ice, microbial, and dust resistant fabrics (Wu, Zheng, & Wu, 2005). Depending on the field, the ethics involved in bioengineering vary. In the environment, bioengineering provides ways to reduce environmental toxins and natural methods of water containment. In manufacturing, ethical issues are minimal because almost all applications aim to create more efficient and less polluting means of production (Dianne Ahmann and John R. Dorgan, 2007a). In healthcare, biotechnology offers new methods of diagnosis and research into diseases and disorders, and provides the materials needed to safely repair or replace living tissues (Bhat & Kumar, 2013). Disadvantages of bioengineering are the risk of environmental alienation with uncontrollable reactions, or the fact that product manipulations could have adverse effects on humans and other organisms (Obidimma C. Ezezika and Peter A. Singer , 2010). This article aims to address the immensenumber of positive implications of bioengineering in the environment, manufacturing and healthcare. The state of the Earth is fragile. Centuries of exploitation have left many areas barren compared to what they once were. Technological progress has been made to better exploit the environment's resources, without giving anything back in return. The consequences of this progress are destruction and a climate that threatens to destroy the current way of life. Carbon dioxide levels have increased by more than 135% since before the industrial revolution, eclipsing expected normal fluctuation levels (Richard Alley et al., 2007). The level of waste on land and at sea continues to increase. Production of thermoplastics exceeds 100 million tons per year, with approximately 50 million tons released within two years of production (Dianne Ahmann and John R. Dorgan, 2007a). Coal-fired and nuclear power plants produce approximately 400,000 and 405 tonnes of waste per year per 1,000 MWe power plant, respectively (World Nuclear Association, 2015). The production of energy and petroleum-based products is a major source of greenhouse gases as well as contaminants entering the environment during production and at waste disposal sites. The greenhouse gases produced by these processes also lead to rising water levels that threaten more than 650 million people. and dozens of countries (Thomas Dietz & Deborah Balk, 2007). Bioengineering provides a powerful tool to address the challenges of cleaning up toxic waste, avoiding disastrous flooding, and reducing our global consumption. Toxic waste is the food source for some extreme organisms and, if handled correctly, these organisms could be used in beneficial ways. Using old and new biotechnologies, flood defenses can be built to protect some of the world's largest cities and hundreds of millions of people. Finally, bioreactors offer a way to biologically mass produce plastics, particularly biodegradable or reusable plastics. The exploitation and refinement of natural resources is for the most part never 100% efficient. The waste produced often ends up contaminating nearby environments such as lakes, forests (Reece, 2011), oceans (Ingleton, 2015) and the homes of local communities (Shilu Tong, Yasmin E. von Schirnding and Tippawan Prapamontol, 2000 ). Some organisms found in nature feed on some of these toxins. These leading candidates provide the basis for further bioengineering of organisms optimally engineered for toxin removal. The optimal organism would be one that requires little space or nutrients to reproduce and has a high metabolic rate. These organisms should also be modified in some way to prevent their permanent entry into the local environment. This method of cleaning up toxins relies on discovering organisms that have already adapted to using oils, radioactive isotopes and plastics as food sources and then genetically modifying them to perform this function at a rapid rate. faster and more efficient (Obidimma C. Ezezika and Peter A. Singer, 2010). These GMOs can then be deployed in a timely and cost-effective manner, which also requires minimal monitoring and operational costs. In the event of an oil spill, it has been found that organisms living in the oceans naturally feed on the oil that seeps into the ocean from the seabed on a daily basis. However, these organisms do not consume the oil as quickly as would be desired.governments and environmentalists, and sometimes produce unfavorable by-products (Obidimma C. Ezezika & Peter A. Singer, 2010). Genetic modification of these organisms would restore metabolisms and ensure that any waste is safe for the environment (Brooijmans, Pastink and Siezen, 2009). Non-renewable energy sources all produce some sort of waste. Coal-fired power plants are the largest producer of waste, producing an average per plant of 125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from smokestack scrubbers each year. Worse still, in the United States, at least 42 percent of coal burning, waste ponds, and landfills are unlined, contaminating aquifers and local water sources (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2012 ). Nuclear power plants produce, worldwide, approximately 200,000 m3 of low- and medium-level radioactive waste and approximately 10,000 m3 of high-level waste, including spent fuel designated as waste. Unlike waste from coal-fired power plants, nuclear waste is stored and regulated in a highly controlled manner and is integrated into the cost of the utility. However, over time, these storage sites and the mining site can become contaminated or leak. The organisms could be engineered to reduce the amount of waste produced by coal-fired power plants, or the carbon dioxide produced could be diverted to a bioreactor where it could be used as a raw material in the production of organic molecules. For nuclear waste, organisms have been found to use the decay process to live at depth. If these organisms could also produce a less radioactive isotope, this could provide a long-term solution for most storage sites (Nicolle Rager Fuller, 2015). Finally, the waste produced by daily life, if not fully recycled, will end up in landfills. Most of these wastes are not readily biodegradable, and those that do do not always break down into environmentally safe substances. The majority of this waste is plastic, now omnipresent in modern life, the material is very strong and does not break down easily. When this happens, gases can be released, organisms can eat it, or become trapped within its rigid confines. One solution, besides producing PLA and PHA plastics as mentioned in the paper, is to use organisms to degrade and eat this plastic. If properly designed, these organisms will not pose a threat to the environment and can be easily controlled (Yang, Yang, Wu, Zhao, & Jiang, 2014). Apart from plastics, human bio-waste is also a major problem and a very energy-intensive process. Bioengineering specific systems usingThe oldest of all fields of bioengineering, erosion control using plants and natural barriers has been around for centuries. Remnants of the early projects can still be found in Western Europe and the Middle East. Traditional methods of erosion control, or water containment, involve the strategic planting of trees and other plants to promote soil stability, while more modern methods incorporate plant-based, chemical and mechanical (A. Evette et al., 2009). These modern methods improve growth and allow a greater diversity of plants to be used, which improves the ecosystem. When treating wastewater, the use of local ecosystems or favorable organisms such as algae offer ways to reduce the overall energy input requiredto wastewater treatment. This is the case with algae, the populations are very easy to cultivate and the cycle provides raw material for the algae at first, then biofuel production and then at the end. Such is the case at an Alabama water treatment facility, which conducted a demonstration program using local algae strains to clean wastewater. The result was a negative carbon cycle, which required little energy input and produced potable water and algae from which to make products (Tina Casey, 2014). The previous generation of plastic bags were the byproduct of oil refining. Providing a lightweight, strong and inexpensive means of transporting goods, the product became a staple of any business in the 1960s (SPI: The Plastics Industry Trade Association, 2015). Just like plastic bags, thermoplastics, foams, adhesives and many coatings also come from petroleum. Petroleum products account for 5-10% of global oil consumption and are a $310 billion industry in the United States alone. There are a number of problems associated with petroleum-based plastics. Oil is becoming a limited resource, the end products are non-degradable, there are potential links to disease, and waste entering the environment harms wildlife, making alternatives attractive both economically and environmental (Dianne Ahmann and John R. Dorgan, 2007a). For example, only 7% of plastic bags made it to recycling plants in the early 2000s, leaving the rest taking up space in landfills and being mistakenly eaten by organisms that would ultimately be eaten by humans (Ed Weisberg, 2006). Solutions to replace single-use plastic bags and other petroleum-based thermoplastics come from bioengineering natural and renewable pathways in biorefineries, offering processes compatible with the conventional supply chain that can benefit all aspects of the supply chain. In a biorefinery, a large amount of raw material is added and the process produces the bioplastic, polylactic acid (PLA), through fermentation and refining. Bioreactors are most efficient if they are placed close to the raw material source and do not disrupt the plastics supply chain to consumers until the item has reached the end of its productive life. The PLA can be left to compost, or possibly burned from these bioplastics to recover part of the energy used in their manufacture. The United States, according to the Department of Energy (DOE) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), could produce 1 billion dry tons of biomass, thus offsetting 30% of oil consumption in by 2030 (Dianne Ahmann & John R. Dorgan, 2007b). Currently, manufacturing and processing involve many physical and mechanical steps. These methods are inherently inefficient, leading to high containment and cleanup costs (Michael E Porter & Claas Van der Linde, 1995). If these processes were to be redesigned using renewable raw materials, efficient pathways and functional products, the idea of ​​manufacturing would be rethought. This is the idea of ​​bio-manufacturing. Biomanufacturing is a subset of bioengineering and integrates living and non-living methods of using organic compounds and substrates to produce functional everyday products such as plastics or drugs (Dianne Ahmann and John R. Dorgan, 2007a). Although energy production goes beyond productionenzymatic, it is possible to use the by-products of energy production. Three bioproduction methods include genetically modified organisms (GMOs), bioreactors, and bioseparators. Each serves a different purpose, but can also work together in a larger system called a biorefinery. GMOs, such as silkworms engineered to produce spider silk (Elizabeth Howell, 2014), are capable of producing raw materials, and in a bioreactor, enzymes take the substrate and refine it into a usable product. After the bioreactor makes the product, the bioseparators remove unwanted byproducts, leaving only the product. This system can be modified to accommodate different substrate sources and bioreactors, and does not always need enzymes. The most common and promising refining route is to replace thermoplastics and is described below. In the production of PLA, the raw material is added and the reactor conditions and processes form the product. In other bioreactors, the process is truly live. The current process uses natural enzymes to take the raw material or substrate and produce polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). PHA is a natural molecule that bacteria use to store energy. However, PHA polymers have thermoplastic properties, which makes them very attractive for commercial purposes (Hansson et al., 2015). Currently, PHA and PLA reactors are limited to low volume, high value (LVHV) products such as pharmaceuticals. Further engineering of organisms and process will enable the production of high volume, low value (HVLV) products, and ultimately photosynthetic reactors will require no substrate. These developments, along with methods for reducing biological waste and reliance on intensive food crops, will significantly reduce the environmental impact of these processes (Dianne Ahmann and John R. Dorgan, 2007a). With these improvements, biomanufacturing will become a more efficient and profitable mode of production, benefiting both the environment and businesses. Today, biomanufacturing is a small but rapidly growing area in which multinational companies are beginning to invest in technology. Currently, pharmaceutical companies are most likely to use biomanufacturing to produce LVHV products. As technology develops and genetic engineering techniques improve, the production of HVLV products such as plastics and fuels will become a reality (Guochen Du, Lilian XL Chen, and Jian Yu, 2004). The limiting factors are only investment and time. The applications of bioengineering are vast: plastics, cosmetics, fuels, fine chemicals, blood, hormones, food, and much more are all possible (Octave and Thomas, 2009). As stated earlier, the possibilities and feasibility of such production depend on investment and invention in bioengineering to optimize and quantify biorefining. It is conceivable that organic products could power entire supply chains and be carbon neutral or carbon free. Technology is now integrated into almost every aspect of medicine, but the new frontier makes the technology more analogous and compatible with living tissues. Bioengineering in healthcare comes under biomedical engineering and is getting a new definition. To summarize the words of Bhat& Kumar, biomedical engineering can be defined as any instrument or material intended to be introduced or interactwith living tissue, particularly as part of a medical device or implant, which does not require chemical activation or metabolism to be effective. , and also does not cause unwanted interaction with the host tissue (Bhat & Kumar, 2013). This definition excludes pharmaceuticals, while including imaginative and diagnostic technologies that are crucial to the modern understanding of medicine. It is also worth noting that aside from procedural uses of biotechnology, pharmaceutical products actually benefit from bioengineering. While incorporating this definition, bioengineering relies heavily on the ability to manipulate and work from what nature already presents, resulting in inventions that work with and as our bodies. Healthcare professionals have many new tools to diagnose and treat diseases. When a patient is admitted, the hospital room is equipped with monitors connected to every part of the body considered fundamental to sustaining life. Diagnosing patients is no longer the task of a single doctor. Instead, radiologists and relevant specialists review the data provided by diagnostic imaging machines. MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging) were designed to take advantage of the magnetic alignment of atoms in the body to provide a sharp image without exposure to radiation, PET (positron emission tomography) scans can reveal metabolic processes and heart monitors can reveal signs of inflammation or inflammation. a heart attack (Grumet, 1993). Technologies such as stents, catheters and other implantable devices can be designed in such a way that they are capable of long-term drug release while in the body. Or, tools used during a surgical procedure, such as stitches or scaffolding, may be designed to be taken up or used by the body rather than needing to be removed or causing problems in the future . Engineers are also able to produce much lighter, real-weight bone replacements that are also as strong, or even stronger, than bone (Bhat and Kumar, 2013). However, the true futuristic side of medicine is also within our reach. Nanotechnology is capable of radically changing how diseases are treated and even how often humans should visit a healthcare facility. Nanobots could potentially work alongside white blood cells to monitor the body and systematically attack and repair any broken parts (Roco, 2003). However, caring for the patient remains largely a human task, although it has greatly aided my engineering in some cases. The equipment used is almost innumerable and all have been designed in a sterile and precise manner. Biomedical engineers now face the challenge of reducing waste in the healthcare industry to protect the bottom line and also protect the environment. Using PLA and PHA is a simple method, but additional testing and engineering is required to bring the plastic up to standards used in the medical setting (Bhat & Kumar, 2013). Since bioengineering and controlled replication of a patient's cells is now possible, autografts are a future possibility. This eliminates the challenges posed by transplants as the host body does not accept the foreign tissue and the body begins to attack that tissue, known as graft-versus-host disease (Griffith & Naughton, 2002). Finally, the materials less..