Biofabrication
Biofabrication
Most animals and plants live in areas with particular climate conditions, for instance, rainfall patterns and temperature enabling them to survive. Any slight change to the climate may harm the animals and plants, including all elements of the entire ecosystem. More droughts, less rain, rising sea levels, and temperatures can significantly disrupt the life of animals and plants and change their life cycles. It is estimated that by 2100 around 50% of all the world’s species will be extinct because of climate change. Technological advancements play a significant role in protecting the environment because they can support sustainability in fishing, protect and track endangered species, curb poaching, and protect climate change. Biofabrication is one such technological innovation. The industrial biofabrication technology potential is far and above the old medically oriented organ printing and tissue engineering. In other words, it is vital for creating potentially highly predictive human tissue- and cell-based technology for environmental conservation.
Biofabrication entails producing sophisticated biological products from materials, including molecules, biomaterials, matrices, and living cells. This rapidly developing technology has inspired the development of 3D fabrication technologies. The automated organs and tissues production to address health and environmental challenges. It is an innovation synthesizing multifaceted, non-existing, living biological goods from local resources such as live cells, chemicals, biomaterials, and extracellular matrices. The major sectors leading to fabrication technology development are mechanics engineering, cell and advanced biology, and biomaterials science. This technology can also help develop revolutionary biotechnologies for renewable energy generation in the biofuel sector and drastically interrupt conventional animal-based agriculture through animal-free food development in the long run. The organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in its report, explored how industrial biotechnology can be included as part of the struggle to control climate change (OECD, 2011). It is attributable to the fact that these products produce less greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining performance than their non-biological counterparts.
Biofabrication technology plays a very critical role in reducing the effect of global warming. The technology has disrupted established industrial processes as well as the cycle of resource use. Biofabrication also has many benefits for industrial processes, including reducing waste, increasing recycling rates, improving production quality control, and saving time in design changes. It can yield better environmental performance by ensuring they meet standards like Energy Star certification or LEED green building rating system requirements. These industry standards require high levels of energy efficiency during manufacturing operations. It can be achieved by giving various solutions for competitive industrial performance in specific sectors. For instance, industrial biotechnology can help reduce energy use in manufacturing operations (Hospodiuk et al., 2016 p 10). According to Park et al. (2019 p 11), “even though the industrial fabrication technology industry is in its infancy, it now blocks the formation of 33 million tonnes of CO2 per year through diverse applications, even without accounting for ethanol usage. Meanwhile, it releases at least 2 million tonnes of CO2.” Bio-fabrication innovation has facilitated the development of herbicide-tolerant biotech crops along with crop protection, reducing this tillage need. Concurrently, the invention helps minimize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by containing carbon from the atmosphere in soil health and converting it to organic matter, lowering farm machinery fuel-usage emission levels, and lowering the impact of global warming.
Biofabrication technology helps to protect wildlife animals which are natural resources of the environment. Gao et al. (2019) highlighted that human activities, including urbanization, tend to destroy plants and animal habitats, affecting climate. Various technological techniques such as Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (IPSC) are used in animal ecology and conservation (Stanton et al., 2019). Two fundamental approaches have been highlighted to save endangered and fragile animal species. Foremost, it involves protecting species in their natural environment. Secondly, it entails caring and breeding for individual species outside of their natural habitat. IPSCs are unique cells that can copy themselves the same way and specialize in new cell types. For this reason, they help in protecting endangered animals (Gao et al., 2019). Due to the growing pressures on wildlife conservation, consider the best approaches to leveraging technological revolutions to facilitate collaboration among stakeholders.
Biofabrication technology techniques are also used in vitro meat manufacture, which is a unique method in core fabrication without using animals. By developing “animal-free” meat and meat products, this fabrication of various living goods utilizing diverse bioengineering techniques has the potential to lessen the negative consequences of present meat production systems and drastically revolutionize traditional animal-based agriculture (Hospodiuk et al., 2016). Conventional meat production techniques have significant repercussions such as nutrition-related disorders, food-borne illnesses, resource consumption and pollution, and the employment of farm animals. According to Moroni et al. (2018 p 400), “Because circumstances of an in vitro meat processing system are controlled and manipulated, this novel technique of mammal production of meat may provide health and environmental advantages by lowering ecological and waste consumption connected with present meat production methods.”
Despite the critical role biotechnology technology plays in protecting natural resources such as wildlife animals, technology has also introduced new techniques that negatively affect these natural resources. For instance, new technology allows fleets to increase their fishing capacity, resulting in the rapid depletion of fish supplies. The development of GPS, fish finders, echo-sounders, and acoustic cameras has resulted in a 5% annual improvement in the ability of boats to catch fish (Park et al., 2019 p 11). However, the benefits of technology on the environment are many compared to their harmful effect. Although fishers can locate the fish using the technology, the relevant authority can now trace the fishers steps and analyze the most endangered species. From this point, they can find various techniques to save the endangered species in the water.
In conclusion, technological advancements play a significant role in protecting the environment because they can support sustainability in fishing, protect and track endangered species, curb poaching, and protect climate change. The industrial biofabrication technology potential is far and above the old medically oriented organ printing and tissue engineering and has inspired the development of 3d fabrication technologies. The automated organs and tissues production to address health and environmental challenges. Biofabrication has a vital role in environmental conservation and its natural resources. Biofabrication technology has managed to reduce the global warming effects by controlling the amount of CO2 released from the industry. All these attempts of biotechnology have extensively promoted the conservation of the environment and its natural resources. Even though biotechnology technology’s critical role in protecting natural resources such as wildlife animals, technology has also introduced new techniques that negatively affect these natural resources.
References
Gao, G., Kim, B. S., Jang, J., & Cho, D. (2019). Recent strategies in extrusion-based three-dimensional cell printing toward organ Biofabrication. ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, 5(3), 1150-1169. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsbiomaterials.8b00691
Hospodiuk, M., Moncal, K. K., Dey, M., & Ozbolat, I. T. (2016). Extrusion-based Biofabrication in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. 3D Printing and Biofabrication, 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40498-1_10-1
Moroni, L., Boland, T., Burdick, J. A., De Maria, C., Derby, B., Forgacs, G., Groll, J., Li, Q., Malda, J., Mironov, V. A., Mota, C., Nakamura, M., Shu, W., Takeuchi, S., Woodfield, T. B., Xu, T., Yoo, J. J., & Vozzi, G. (2018). Biofabrication: A guide to technology and terminology. Trends in Biotechnology, 36(4), 384-402. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2017.10.015
Park, T. Y., Yang, Y. J., Ha, D., Cho, D., & Cha, H. J. (2019). Marine-derived natural polymer-based bioprinting ink for biocompatible, durable, and controllable 3D constructs. Biofabrication, 11(3), 035001. https://doi.org/10.1088/1758-5090/ab0c6f
Stanton, M. M., Tzatzalos, E., Donne, M., Kolundzic, N., Helgason, I., & Ilic, D. (2019). Prospects for the use of induced pluripotent stem cells in animal conservation and environmental protection. Stem cells translational medicine, 8(1), 7-13.
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2011). Industrial Biotechnology and Climate Change OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES. https://www.oecd.org/sti/emerging-tech/49024032.pdf