Chapter 10 — Biotechnology and Its Applications

Chapter 10 of the Class 12 Biology NCERT textbook, "Biotechnology and Its Applications", covers how biotechnology is used in agriculture (GM crops, Bt toxin, RNAi pest resistance), medicine (recombinant insulin, gene therapy, molecular diagnosis), and transgenic animals, along with ethical issues surrounding genetic modification and biopiracy.

• Biotechnology in agriculture — Genetically modified crops such as Bt cotton carry bacterial genes that resist pests, and RNAi strategies protect plants from parasites, cutting pesticide use and showing how engineered plants boost farm output.
• Medical applications — Biotechnology produces life-saving products like recombinant human insulin, treats inherited defects through gene therapy, and enables early, sensitive molecular diagnosis with tools such as PCR and ELISA.
• Transgenic animals — Animals engineered to carry foreign genes are used to study disease, produce valuable biological products, and test the safety of vaccines and chemicals, extending genetic modification beyond microbes and plants.
• Ethics, regulation, and biopiracy — The chapter weighs concerns over genetic modification, including biopiracy — exploiting bio-resources without fair compensation — and describes regulatory oversight such as India's GEAC to keep the technology accountable.

1. 01Bt toxin from Bacillus thuringiensis is expressed in GM crops (Bt cotton, Bt corn) via cry genes (e.g., cryIAc, cryIIAb) to confer insect resistance without chemical pesticides.
2. 02RNAi (RNA interference) is used to protect tobacco plants from the nematode Meloidegyne incognita by introducing nematode-specific dsRNA via Agrobacterium vectors.
3. 03Recombinant human insulin was first produced in 1983 by Eli Lilly by separately expressing insulin chain A and chain B in E. coli plasmids and then combining them with disulfide bonds.
4. 04The first clinical gene therapy was administered in 1990 to a 4-year-old girl with ADA (adenosine deaminase) deficiency, using retroviral vectors to introduce functional ADA cDNA into her lymphocytes.
5. 05PCR and ELISA are key molecular diagnostic tools; PCR detects very low concentrations of pathogens (e.g., HIV) and mutations in cancer-suspected genes before symptoms appear.
6. 06GEAC (Genetic Engineering Approval Committee) is India's regulatory body for GM research; biopiracy — unauthorised use of bio-resources by multinationals without compensation — is a major ethical concern addressed by Indian patent law amendments.