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Tomorrow, biotechnology will bring you
better health and treatments for disease
using agriculture ñ the ultimate
sustainable manufacturing process.
Right now, scientists are developing
plants that produce medicines. Think of
them as “green drug factories” that will
produce all kinds of medical products
you and your family may need.
 Today, researchers are working with
plants such as rice and tobacco to produce
proteins for life-saving biotech
drugs. One day, rice may be used to
make enzymes that can treat iron deficiency,
which affects 67 percent of the
worldís population, and anemia.
Researchers are also experimenting with
tobacco plants as drug factories; the
possibilities include “growing” a preventative
treatment for ovarian cancer in
tobacco leaves.
 This kind of cutting-edge biotech
research is under way all over the world,
on every continent, including
Antarctica, where researchers are
searching for microbes with useful properties
for manufacturing.
Back here at home, take one more
look around. There are biotechnology
benefits everywhere you look.
These benefits are just a small
sampling of the enormous improvements
brought by biotechnology over the past
50+ years, since James Watson and
Francis Crick first described the DNA
molecule. And even as you are reading
this, scientists around the globe are
imagining even more solutions, big and
small, for the challenging world in which
you live.
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