Biotechnology Terms Starting With I
Biotechnology Glossary: I
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In Vitro Fertilization
/ in VEE-troh fer-tih-lih-ZAY-shun / · Latin in vitro, in glass; Latin fertilitas, fruitfulness
In vitro fertilization is a procedure in which eggs retrieved from a woman's ovaries are fertilized by sperm in a laboratory dish and the resulting embryo is transferred to a uterus to establish pregnancy.
IVF begins with hormonal stimulation using gonadotropins to recruit multiple follicles simultaneously, followed by transvaginal egg retrieval under ultrasound guidance. Retrieved eggs are fertilized either by mixing with prepared sperm or by intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in which a single sperm is injected directly into an egg. Resulting embryos are cultured for three to five days before transfer, and preimplantation genetic testing can screen embryos for chromosomal abnormalities or single-gene disorders at this stage.
Since Louise Brown became the first person born through IVF in Oldham, England, on July 25, 1978, more than ten million people worldwide have been born using the technique.
Robert Edwards, the physiologist who developed IVF alongside gynecologist Patrick Steptoe, waited more than 30 years for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he received in 2010 at age 85, just two years before his death. Steptoe had died in 1988 and could not share the award, as the Nobel is not awarded posthumously.
Reproductive System Fun Facts →IVF creates a baby entirely in a laboratory. Only the fertilization and early embryo culture occur outside the body; pregnancy itself develops in a uterus after embryo transfer, and the gestational process is entirely natural from that point onward.
How To Become A Perinatologist? →In cattle breeding, IVF is used to produce embryos from genetically superior donor cows, with a single high-value cow yielding up to 30 or more oocytes per hormonal stimulation cycle. Those embryos are transferred into surrogate recipient cows, allowing one donor to produce far more offspring per year than natural reproduction would permit and accelerating genetic improvement across commercial herds.
Spermatogenesis →Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell
/ in-DYOOST ploor-ih-POH-tent stem sel / · Latin inducere; pluris + potentia; Old English stemn
Induced pluripotent stem cell is an adult somatic cell that has been reprogrammed to a pluripotent state by introducing a defined set of transcription factors, giving it the ability to differentiate into nearly any cell type in the body.
Shinya Yamanaka and Kazutoshi Takahashi first demonstrated iPSC generation in 2006 by introducing four transcription factors, Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc, into mouse fibroblasts, reversing their differentiated state. Human iPSCs followed in 2007, and Yamanaka received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012 for the discovery. Because iPSCs can be derived from a patient’s own skin or blood cells, they carry that individual’s genetic background, making them powerful tools for modeling inherited diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and long QT syndrome in a dish.
Researchers have since guided iPSCs into cardiomyocytes, neurons, pancreatic beta cells, and retinal pigment epithelium, with some iPSC-derived retinal cell therapies entering clinical trials in Japan as early as 2014.
Before iPSC technology, studying a living patient's neurons was essentially impossible without a brain biopsy. Researchers can now take a blood sample from a person with Parkinson's disease, reprogram those cells into iPSCs, and differentiate them into dopaminergic neurons to observe disease-relevant changes directly in culture.
How To Become An Internal Medicine Specialist? →iPSCs come from embryos, like embryonic stem cells. iPSCs are derived from ordinary adult body cells, such as skin fibroblasts or blood cells, and their creation does not involve embryos at any stage.
Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan derived iPSCs from a patient with age-related macular degeneration and differentiated them into retinal pigment epithelial sheets approximately 1.3 by 3 millimeters in size. Those sheets were surgically transplanted beneath the patient's retina in 2014, marking the first clinical use of iPSC-derived tissue in a human patient.
Industrial Fermentation
/ in-DUS-tree-ul fer-men-TAY-shun / · Latin industrialis; fermentum, leaven
Industrial fermentation is a large-scale bioprocess in which microorganisms or cultured cells are grown in controlled bioreactors to convert substrates into commercially valuable products such as antibiotics, enzymes, organic acids, or biofuels.
Bioreactors used in industrial fermentation range from a few hundred liters for high-value pharmaceutical products to more than 500,000 liters for commodity chemicals such as ethanol. Engineers monitor and adjust temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, agitation rate, and nutrient feed continuously to maximize both cell growth and product yield. Bacteria, yeast, and filamentous fungi are the most common production organisms; Aspergillus niger, for example, produces the majority of the world’s citric acid supply through submerged fermentation, generating roughly 2 million metric tons per year.
Upstream process development determines the fermentation conditions, while downstream processing, including centrifugation, filtration, and chromatography, purifies the product from the broth.
The antibiotic penicillin, discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, was initially produced in tiny quantities from surface cultures of Penicillium mold. Wartime demand during World War II drove engineers to develop deep-tank submerged fermentation, increasing penicillin yields by more than a thousandfold and making mass production feasible by 1944.
Fermentation Biology →Fermentation always produces alcohol. Many industrial fermentation processes are strictly aerobic and yield products such as citric acid, amino acids, recombinant insulin, and industrial enzymes, with no ethanol produced at any stage.
Are Enzymes Proteins? →Corynebacterium glutamicum is grown in aerobic fed-batch fermenters to produce L-glutamate and L-lysine at industrial scale, with annual global lysine production exceeding 2 million metric tons for use as an animal feed supplement. Fermentation runs typically last 30 to 40 hours, and engineers use real-time metabolic flux analysis to adjust glucose feed rates and maintain the cells in a high-productivity state throughout the process.
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