Biotechnology is the use of living organisms and processes to enhance the quality of plants, animals, and microorganisms for useful purposes. The food industry is one of the largest users of biotechnology. Microorganisms play a major role in our food supply like the production of cheese, bread, wine, soy sauce, yogurt, vitamins, and food processing enzymes. In the past several years biotechnology has expanded to include various novel techniques such as genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is the manipulation of genetic information by techniques other than traditional breeding.
In the case of microorganisms, most genetic manipulations have been for production of food ingredients or the production of enzymes critical to some aspect of food production. For example, cheese production is one of the first examples of the application of recombinant DNA technology in foods. Through the use of recombinant DNA, microbes are able to mass produce the enzyme chymosin, which is necessary for curd production in cheese. This makes the enzyme much more widely available and at reduces cost. This is the reason why the production of cheese using recombinant DNA technology has remained unopposed.
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