, The Environmental Benefits from Molecular Biotechnology Application Shu-Hao Chang ABSTRACT In the 20th century, there were a lot of environmental pollution problems which had not been solved. However, the new types of environmental pollutions are still coming with as fast as the technology innovations in 21st century. Therefore, not only the old problems are needed to solve by new techniques, but also the new problems are required to figure out the answers. Molecular biotechnology is considered as one of the most important subjects which can prevent the pollution and recover our environment becoming healthy. In this study, it will focus on how the environmental science and technology appellation of molecular biotechnology try to enhance the environmental prevention and reclamation at the following parts: environmental monitor and inspection, pollutant removal, soil and groundwater treatment, molecular nanotechnology, green technology, and examination responsibility of environmental disputes. KEYWORDS molecular biotechnology, environmental benefits, biotechnology, environmental pollution. INTRODUCTION Since 20th century, the problems of the environmental pollution have become worst. Facing the new science and technology improvement so fast in the present time, could these old problems of environmental protection break through the bottleneck by the new technology? The answer is positive because of the progress of molecular biotechnology. No matter on the microbial detection, pollutant appraised, pollution control, green production, or risk assessed…etc, the molecule biotechnology can be used for every kind of mediums ,such as environmental monitor, environmental inspection and removal pollutants. For this article, I attempt to analyze and classify the new technical applications of molecular biotechnology which will help us to understand the power and benefits from those significant techniques. For example, consider an environment in which pollution of a particular type is the most of all. Let us think about the effluents of a food industry which has mixed up with a local water body like a lake or pond. We can find huge deposits of food wastes which are not so easily taken up for degradation by microorganisms except for a few exemptions. We isolate a few microorganisms from the polluted site and scan for any significant changes in their genome like mutations or evolutions. Such this kind of process, we can usually find which all applications of molecule biotechnology are using for monitoring and inspecting then we can find the way to treat those pollutants. By the following, I will use six regions to describe the environmental benefits of molecular biotechnology: ¾ Environmental monitoring and inspecting ¾ Environmental management and risk evaluation ¾ Soil and ground water treatment ¾ Molecular Nanotechnology ¾ Green Technology ¾ Examination Responsibility of environment disputesENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING INSPECTING Surrounding our living environment or in the municipal health, there are many places having pathogen or virus that need environmental monitor and inspection. For instance, we have to monitor and inspect or measure the microbial growth and decline, drinking water, and the sewer microorganism in water treatment plant. There are two main groups which can help us to monitor and inspect the species of the pathogen or virus: ¾ PCR, RT-PCR, Quantitative Competitive-PCR The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a technique widely used in molecular biology. It derives its name from one of its components, a DNA polymerase used to amplify (or replicate) & a piece of DNA (the target) by in vitro enzymatic replication. By recombining a lot of this species, we can get the sequence data base, and make the phylogenetic tree. Then, we can use the phylogenetic tree to provide the microbial characteristic of the environmental samples or pure culture. Because the virus is not only DNA, but also RNA which needs to do the reverse process called reverse transcription- polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The Quantitative competitive PCR (QC-PCR) is the fragment data of PCR adding into the sample which has the target model that we want (Kim et al, 2002). Through the previous process, the high concentration target model is very similar to our sample. Figure 1. the process of polymerase chain reaction (Access Excellence,1999)¾ FISH FISH (Fluorescent in situ hybridization) is a cytogenetic technique which can be used to detect and localize the presence or absence of specific DNA sequences on chromosomes. It uses fluorescent probes binding parts of the chromosome to show a high degree of sequence similarity. Fluorescence microscopy can be used to find out where the fluorescent probe bound to the chromosome. FISH is often used for finding specific features in DNA. These features can be used in genetic counseling, medicine, and species identification. (Wilderer et al, 2002) For the environmental application, we can use FISH not only to detect the bacteria and virus easily, but also to get the accurate location in our sample. Therefore, this powerful technique will let the environmental monitoring and inspecting become easier. Figure 2. The principle of the FISH Experiment to localize a gene in the nucleus. (Wikipedia, 2007) ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND RISK EVALUATION The new molecular biotechnology can be used on the management, risk evaluation and pollution prevention of the environmental jobs. Microarray genomics, DNA chips, antibody or protein chips, all can be used for inspection and examination, such as toxicity pollutants, chemical substances, and bacteria and microorganisms. Gene chip is one kind of new technology of DNA microarray. It can analyze the gene expression in a whole bunch of genes. This technology does not like the traditional technology, which are very expensive and spend a lot of time to inspect or examine a lot of microorganisms to confirm the pollutants. On the contrary, it can reduce not only the inspecting time but also the number of biological experiments. Recently, most of environmental toxicity inspections usually used this technology to shorten the period of biological tests. Also, if we need to use amount of animals’ experiments and just focus on one type of pollution, the new bioassay technology, such as DNA microarray, can detect the cadmium chloride (CdCl2) or trichloroethylene in the liver