Biotechnology is the use of living systems andorganisms to develop or make useful products, or "any technologicalapplication that uses biological systems, living organisms orderivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes forspecific use" (UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Art. 2).Depending on the tools and applications, it often overlaps with the(related) fields of bioengineering and biomedical engineering.

For thousands of years, humankind has used biotechnology inagriculture, food production, and medicine. The term itself islargely believed to have been coined in 1919 by Hungarian engineerKároly Ereky. In the late 20th and early 21st century,biotechnology has expanded to include new and diverse sciences suchas genomics, recombinant gene technologies, applied immunology, anddevelopment of pharmaceutical therapies and diagnostic tests.

Biotechnology has applications in four major industrial areas,including health care (medical), crop production and agriculture,non food (industrial) uses of crops and other products (e.g.biodegradable plastics, vegetable oil, biofuels), and environmentaluses.

For example, one application of biotechnology is the directeduse of organisms for the manufacture of organic products (examplesinclude beer and milk products). Another example is using naturallypresent bacteria by the mining industry in bioleaching.Biotechnology is also used to recycle, treat waste, cleanup sitescontaminated by industrial activities (bioremediation), and also toproduce biological weapons.

A series of derived terms have been coined to identify severalbranches of biotechnology; for example:

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field which addressesbiological problems using computational techniques, and makes therapid organization as well as analysis of biological data possible.The field may also be referred to as computational biology, and canbe defined as, "conceptualizing biology in terms of molecules andthen applying informatics techniques to understand and organize theinformation associated with these molecules, on a large scale."[14]Bioinformatics plays a key role in various areas, such asfunctional genomics, structural genomics, and proteomics, and formsa key component in the biotechnology and pharmaceuticalsector.
Blue biotechnology is a term that has been used to describe themarine and aquatic applications of biotechnology, but its use isrelatively rare.
Green biotechnology is biotechnology applied to agriculturalprocesses. An example would be the selection and domestication ofplants via micropropagation. Another example is the designing oftransgenic plants to grow under specific environments in thepresence (or absence) of chemicals. One hope is that greenbiotechnology might produce more environmentally friendly solutionsthan traditional industrial agriculture. An example of this is theengineering of a plant to express a pesticide, thereby ending theneed of external application of pesticides. An example of thiswould be Bt corn. Whether or not green biotechnology products suchas this are ultimately more environmentally friendly is a topic ofconsiderable debate.
Red biotechnology is applied to medical processes. Some examplesare the designing of organisms to produce antibiotics, and theengineering of genetic cures through genetic manipulation.
White biotechnology, also known as industrial biotechnology, isbiotechnology applied to industrial processes. An example is thedesigning of an organism to produce a useful chemical. Anotherexample is the using of enzymes as industrial catalysts to eitherproduce valuable chemicals or destroy hazardous/pollutingchemicals. White biotechnology tends to consume less in resourcesthan traditional processes used to produce industrial goods