The Hindu Business Line : Biotech sector to be single largest job churner: Expert

BIOTECH industry may become the single largest sector for employment of skilled human resource in the years to come, according to Dr Manju Sharma, former director, Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.

Giving a presentation at Prithvi 2005, the global meet on eco-friendly products and technologies, under way here, Dr Sharma said there are enormous opportunities for a career in new biosciences and new biology. The enormity of biological resources makes a case for raising a whole cadre of highly trained professionals for inventorisation, characterisation and documentation.

Other areas offering big opportunities are plant and agriculture related activities, testing of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and transgenics; use of diagnostics in health care, industrial biotechnology, environmental protection and biodiversity conservation, food processing, production of biologicals and other biotech products and entrepreneurship development, teaching and training in biotechnology.

Career opportunities in genetics could be genetic counsellors for clinical, teaching, administrative, commercial, private practice and consulting environments. Geneticists in basic research, clinical geneticists and cytogenetic technologists will also be much in need.

Other emerging areas are those of molecular geneticists/technologists who understand the molecular basis of genetic disease and to effect its cure, gene therapy, breeding new crop plants and livestock, biotechnology industry, production a range of products from pharmaceuticals to microchips and food testing.

So are laboratory geneticists for agriculture, legal or police work, pharmaceutical development, clinical medicine, and in bioinformatics, various personnel from gene to functional protein to toxicogenomics and pharmacogenomics.

Creation of specific large number of new institutions and centres of excellence provide an excellent opportunity for young scientists and students to pursue research as a career as also a source of livelihood security.

Coming to bioinformatics, biological data and DNA sequence data in particular are accumulating at a phenomenal rate. The main objective of the human genome project (HGP) was to locate and map the entire array of one-lakh genes on human chromosomes. In doing so, their techniques have been revolutionising the medical and biological research and their finding will fundamentally change the way medicine will be practiced in this millennium.

Projects such as Species-2000, a global plant check list, information on release of organisms in environment and animal virus information are producing hard data at the species level in multimedia format. The rate of growth of biological data is estimated to be more than 200 million base pairs per year. The database content itself is doubling in size approximately every year.

The genetic data is becoming the major driving force in drug discovery, protein engineering, design of new molecules, and other related areas. The large stores of biological data are holding promise to serve as the "Discovery Super Highway" for the innovations in biotechnology through a process of analysis and transformation of molecular and structural data into biological knowledge.

Bioinformatics encompasses all the aspects of biological information such as acquisition, processing, storage, distribution, analysis and interpretation that combine the tools and techniques of mathematics, computer science and biology with the aim of understanding the biological significance of a variety of data.

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