For a long time the public has perceived biotechnology to mean dangerous meddling with the genes in food crops. But biotechnology is of course about much more than transgenic food: it also encompasses the use of microbes to make Pharmaceuticals, for example. The many benefits of the first wave of biotech products, in medicine, have unfortunately been overshadowed by the supposed risks of biotech's second wave, in agriculture. Might its third wave-so-called industrial biotech, also known as "white biotech" or "green chemistry"-resolve biotech's image problem?rnAs with other forms of biotechnology, industrial biotech involves engineering biological molecules and microbes with desirable new properties. What is different is how they are then used: to replace chemical processes with biological ones. Whether this is to produce chemicals for other processes or to create products such as biopolymers with new properties, there is huge scope to harness biology to accomplish what previously needed big, dirty chemical factories, but in cleaner and greener ways.
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