 We talk about some transgenic bacteria first. E. coli, skirisha coli is a bacterium, is a short rod-shaped bacterium. This is most commonly used microorganism in biotechnology because this is a bacterium who do not cause most of its strains, its types, do not cause diseases in human beings. So they are safe. If we produce a product with this bacterium, then the benefit is this, that product is safe because they are not pathogens, they do not produce anything that harm the human beings. So we can safely easily use these organisms. There are a lot of many other organisms like this. We call all of these organisms GRAS, the grass organisms, G-R-A-S, generally regarded as safe organisms. There is a list of such organisms present with different institutions and publications which are safe, safe for human beings. They do not produce any disease, they are not pathogens and we prefer to use these organisms, these microorganisms in biotechnology. We can use the genetic engineering or we can use the transgenic bacteria in production of different industrial chemicals because we know that bacteria, they carry out a process called fermentation and bifurmentation which is actually an anaerobic form of respiration. They produces acids and alcohols as the end product of this fermentation metabolic pathway. So we can use bacteria for large scale production of such acids and alcohols. Ethanol is a very common product which is commonly used in our laboratories which is also used sometimes for cleaning up the wounds externally, the external surface of the body when doctors they inject, they had to inject something and medicine or drug inside the body. They clean up the surface of the body with ethanol. Transgenic bacteria are very commonly used in pharmaceutical industry. We just talked about insulin production of human insulin, production of human growth hormone. We also can use the transgenic bacteria for production of vaccines. We know that vaccine is some agent which produces immunity against some specific disease. We can use transgenic bacteria to make various vaccines in mass quantities and of course their cost is also reduced and their allergic reactions are also reduced. If we use the genetic engineering technology, transgenic bacteria are also used in the food industry and in treatment of waste materials. We traditionally use bacteria for making yogurt, cheese, sour creams, the breads in our baking and making beverages and drinks. We make these things at home. People make bread at home, people make cakes at home and we know that in baking we use yeast which is a micro organism. But at large scale, at industrial scale when we want to make these products at a very large scale we actually have to modify and improve the strain of our bacteria, the type of our bacterium to give a more better yield or a more better taste to our product. We can sometimes use transgenic bacteria, sometimes we use naturally present strains, the types of bacteria to make these products. Bacteria are also used, the transgenic bacteria or some naturally found bacteria which are wild type, which are not modified. We can also use them in treatment of waste materials. We know that as the population is increasing, industries are increasing, agriculture is increasing. And we have lot many types of waste, solid waste, liquid waste, the waste water, waste water of industries, waste water of agriculture, there are lot many other things which we simply throw away in the environment. We can use transgenic bacteria or some specific kinds of bacteria present in natural environments to treat these solid, liquid or any other type of waste and convert these waste into some even useful products. We can convert the solid waste into methane, the gas, the biogas which we can use in our cooking or in running our generators to produce electricity. So not only these transgenic bacteria can convert our waste materials into non-toxic products which are actually toxic for the environment and by bacterial action these could be converted into non-toxic products which are not toxic for the environment but we can produce useful products using those bacteria. We can call those products some sort of biofuels. There are many parts of the world in which they actually make their own gas and they make their own electricity by using their own solid waste and this solid waste is actually reacted upon by some bacteria and those bacteria can convert these waste into methane, the gas or also called the biogas. And with this gas they actually run their gas generators and produces electricity. So bacteria are this much useful. Now we talk about transgenic plants. We know that plants we grow are of course the very important part of the ecosystem and they are producers but we also use plants, we actually grow them as crops for getting food at mass scale for example wheat, we need wheat, we need rice, we eat them upon this is our staple food. We make all that chapatis, naans etc. using the wheat, we make our breads and everything with the wheat just like that cotton. Cotton is very very important crop of Pakistan and there are lot many other varieties we grow fruits in wider areas fruit farming all of these crops could be modified with the help of genetic engineering to produce some specific characteristics which can help them in growing better and in increasing their resistance to the environmental changes and to the diseases. We know that when we are growing crops, many times we hear that there is a attack of this particular pest or there is a attack of this particular pest which destroyed the crops of cotton or wheat or something else, we can make resisted varieties. We know that even our many of our lands have a salinity and water logging, same or thour, our many lands have the same or thour which has a lot of salinity and water logging. Many plants which are our crops cannot grow, we know that there are some bacteria which resist the salinity, they can grow very well in the salinity, what we do is we take the gene out of them and put it in some plants, we call these plants as transgenic plants. These plants can grow well in the same or thour soil of salinity, because there is a gene of salinity resistance in them. Just like that we can use many pesticide resistant plants, we know that we have to add pesticides to kill the pests but pesticides are also bad for the plants, we can insert pesticide resistance gene from another organism, may be a bacterium, may be some pest even, we can remove one gene of resistance from an organism and put it into the plants. So if we add the pesticide, the plant will be resistant to that pesticide and only the pests are killed and plants are not affected. So transgenic plants they are used in many ways, we can use transgenic plants increase their product to increase their yield. Now people are working on adding different types of other elements which are useful for the health of the people in the plants genome, if we add those things like for example some specific component which is missing in that plant, if we add a gene of that component that will be added to the plant and through the plant they will go to the human beings because they eat it. Genetic animals, we can also modify animals with the help of genetic engineering, we usually modify animals for better yields because we know that human being is a culturing animals for centuries for getting protein, eggs, milk, we can use genetic engineering to add sometimes the gene of resistance into an organism or sometime we can add a gene that can increase the yield of milk, yield of eggs or the yield of some other sometimes some component in the milk or in the meat and an organism is modified. Maybe it can give us butter yield or maybe sometimes the secret some specific products in their milk mostly sometimes in the meat, there are different types of modified animals which gives a milk which have a specific components, a specific component present in their which is secreted in their milk because they are genetically modified which is required for the children of a specific area. There is a very important application of these transgenic animals, we know that human beings have to face lot many large number of diseases and we cannot do the detailed experiments on human beings because this may threaten their life. What we do, we make animal models of those human diseases mostly we use mice and rats, mice particularly in their characteristics we know it by the blessing of biology knowledge that mice have lot many characteristics which are matching to the human beings. Mostly what happen we make transgenic mice which is just like a human being which have a specific disease for example, obese rats or obese mice are very common in the study of diabetes, hypertension and obesity, we know that obesity, motapa is a very common problem everywhere in the world, we make obese mice which have a specific gene that actually causes obesity in human beings. So, those mice are now just behaving like obese animals eating too much, gaining weight just like that we can make diabetic mice or diabetic rats. Diabetes is a very common disorder these days and it is increasing and it is increasing the health cost and it is decreasing the quality of life of those people who have diabetes. We can make diabetic mice by transgenicity that is by genetic engineering and we can study effect of different types of medicines, effect of different environmental factors upon the diabetic mice and we can apply those results to human beings for example, if we are making a new medicine for treatment of diabetes we can test them better on diabetic mice of course we cannot test them directly on human beings this is not possible. So there are lot many other animals which are used as model of our disease zebrafish for example, have a larger heart and we use that zebrafish as a model for heart diseases, for cardiovascular diseases, we can even modify it further to make it patient of some specific disease and then we can use or we can check it is different pathways that is which are the things which are causing this disease and we can also check different types of medicines on that animal model. So animal models are very very important in pharmaceutical industry and in all types of health studies, health research. Genetically modified animals can give us better yields, they give us animal models of human diseases and they can produce lot many things for us, sometimes antibodies, some enzymes and other things could be produced in an animal by modifying it using genetic engineering. But though this technology is very very useful, extremely useful but there is very very important consideration that is the safety and security. Yes we can use genetic engineering in modifying organisms but when we add a gene or when we delete a gene, gene produces a product. This product can do something, some specific reaction that we do not expect, sometimes the product of the gene which is a protein of course, can modify the reactions or the pathways that we want but there may be some more pathways on which that protein can affect and we do not know about these. So this is very important to find out and to verify that the gene which we are inserting by genetic engineering, if we are doing this process and modifying an organism, is it safe to use that micro-organism, that trans-unit plant or trans-unit animal for human use. We call this particular field biosafety and biosecurity. This is extremely important that when we modify an organism, we have to find out that whether it is safe for human beings and for the environment or not. And there are different organizations in the world which actually find out these things and after verification, they allow these transgenic plants, animals or bacteria to be used in industries or on large scales. The microorganisms, they carry out fermentation. We can use these fermentation pathways for making different products. Micro-organisms anaerobically respire to produce acids and alcohol. They produce different types of acids and they produce alcohol, mostly ethanol. Ethanol we know is very important bio-fuel these days because ethanol could be used as a fuel in different types of petrol engines. Ethanol is in use in different countries. Some microorganisms also produces biodiesel. Some organisms, they can convert different materials, particularly the waste materials into gas, biogas. We can use the fermentation pathways to make bread, cheese, yogurt, sour creams and in industries these pathways are used at large scale. How biology helps here? Because biologists, a kind of biologist called microbiologists, they study the microorganisms. Their characteristics, their structure, their functions, their relationships with each other and with the environment. And when they find out all of these phase, they can help the industrialists to improve the products or increase the yield of their product that they are getting out of microorganism by a normal fermentation pathway. Maybe with the help of biotechnology, that is genetic engineering or some other biological method. And also these organisms are used to study different types of expression of the genes. You know that genes, gene expression is genes produces messenger RNA. The messenger RNA produces protein and we call it the central dogma of molecular biology. So, when we need to study that how genes are expressing in a specific environment, these microorganisms are also used and they help us in studying the phenomena of nature which we cannot study in animals, plants or human beings. So, this was about biotechnology.