Everything that lives on earth consumes food, generates wastes and eventually dies. The world would long ago have drowned in its own waste if not for microorganisms that cycle the wastes back to nutrients that continue to sustain life. Among the microorganisms are the bacteria - the natural housekeepers that work silently and diligently at the microscopic level.

 

These natural housekeepers play a vital role in the natural biological cycle, converting organic materials into microbial cell biomass, carbon dioxide, water and inorganic elements.

 

The inorganic elements are then used to form new cells by plants and algae, which in turn become food sources for fishes, animals and man. Man and animals discharge waste back into the system to be metabolized yet again by the microbial ecosystem, and the cycle repeats itself.Through his industrial, agricultural and domestic activities, man has brought about physical, chemical and biological modifications to the environment.

 

This has resulted in an overloading and disruption of the natural biological cycle. The rate at which we are generating waste vastly exceeds the rate at which the microbial ecosystem can degrade it.

 

Biotechnology offers.......