Biotech Beer

It's a curse and a blessing in many ways to work in the field called Biotechnology. A blessing because when you say "biotechnology" people widen their eyes and go "OOoOOHH!!!"

A curse because then they think we're one of those people, whatever that means. For the general public, biotech has been attached to such concepts as cloning, stem cells, frankenfoods and CSI. I can follow someone's train of thought because that look of "Oh wow, she must be pretty smart!" transforms into horror as they think, "Oh wow, she's cloning Hitler in her basement! Quick Millie, run! She'll yank out your DNA and take over the world!!!"

The classic definition of Biology: The study of life. Biotechnology is simply the study and manipulation of life and it's parts. Yeech...that still sounds horrible, doesn't it? When we talk about "manipulation" of life, think food. Food, at one point, was alive (unless it's a twinkie).

Beer is biotechnology. We grow yeast on hops, let the yeast poison itself to death in it's own alcoholic waist, filter out the dead yeasty bodies and voila! Coors, Miller, Heineken or any variety of poisonous substance you prefer to drink. Incidentally, this was the only way I could get my boss to understand biotechnology. He said, "BEER?! Oh yeah, I understand that. You're making that upstairs?!"

Well, no. Not exactly. The technology is the same! Whether you want to make beer, wine, cheese, insulin, cancer drugs, proteins or any variety of much needed biological products, we use the same technology to grow the microbe (bacteria, yeast, mammalian cells), harvest what it produces (insulin, Herceptin, etc), and purify it out.

Obviously, it's a lot more complicated than that, but at least it got him away from thinking that my students were growing rabid mutant chihuahuas in beakers.