The science of biotechnology can be classified into following branches.
Red Biotechnology
It is simply medical biotechnology. This one is applied to medical processes. Some of them are listed below
- Use of organisms for the production of drugs or antibiotics
- Use of stem cells for damage tissue cure or sometimes to grow entire organ by the process of regeneration. This is referred as stem cell therapy
- To develop new tests to diagnose, to confirm or to predict certain diseases
- Gene therapy
White (gray) Biotechnology
It is simply industry biotechnology. It is applied to industrial processes. Organisms are modified / designed and used for various purposes. Some of them are listed below.
- Production of new chemicals
- Production of plastic substitutes (biopolymers)
- Development of new kinds of vehicle fuels
- Fibers for clothing
Green Biotechnology
It can be referred as Agriculture biotechnology. It is applied to agricultural processes like production of insect, pest and disease resistant crop varieties (transgenic crop plants), disease resistant animals. More on the topic can be read at Agricultural Biotechnology.
Blue biotechnology
It includes processes in aquatic environments, like to control unwanted growth of noxious water-borne organisms, to protect aquatic members from some of the diseases by increasing their resistance to the respective disease. Application of blue biotechnology is relatively rare.
Bioinformatics
It is a fantastic union of computer and biotechnology. Bioinformatics assists in rapid organization and analysis of biological and genetic data. It is applied in various areas, like functional genomics, structural genomics and proteomics, for various purposes like drug and molecular medicine development, gene therapy, creation of bio-weapons, improvement in crop plants for nutritional quality, resistance to disease, pest, drought etc.