Re: whats the differents between biology and biotechnology

Hi Lindsey,

The fundamental difference between biology and biotechnology is that biology is a science, whereas biotechnology is an industry. Specifically, biology is the branch of science concerned with living things whereas biotechnology is an industry which applies biology to the solution of real world problems (see the websites cited below for some examples).

A biotechnologist is more like an inventor than a scientist. Of course, an inventor must have a thorough understanding of science in order to know which scientific principles are likely to be useful for solving a particular problem. Similarly, biotechnologists must have a detailed knowledge of biology, but they will not usually be contributing to our stock of knowledge about how the world works. Rather, they will be using knowledge previously acquired by biologists to solve a particular problem. That's not to say that biotechnologists don't do experiments. They do, but their experiments are designed to find out whether the products they're developing are effective at doing the job they were designed for, or to ensure that they don't have any unforeseen side-effects.

Many scientists are both biologists and biotechnologists. It's often the case that a scientist will be working on the fundamental aspects of some problem in biology while simultaneously working on the potential applications of that research. This can happen when a biotechnologist needs to know something which has never investigated by biologists and they must find it out for themselves. Alternatively, a biologist may become a biotechnologist when the results of a particular experiment suggest some new application of their research which was not previously anticipated.

The field of biotechnology is too vast to go into in any detail here but there are plenty of interesting websites which will give you an idea of the sorts of problems biotechnologists are involved in. Here are a few to get you started...

An Introduction to Biotechnology
The Science of Biotechnology
The Biotechnology Industry

Good luck!

Rob Cruickshank