Biotechnology is a popular term for the generic technology of the 21st century. Although it has been utilised for centuries in traditional production processes, modern biotechnology is only 50 years old and in the last decades it has been witnessing tremendous developments. Bioengineering is the science upon which all Biotechnological applications are based. With the development of new approaches and modern techniques, traditional biotechnology industries are also acquiring new horizons enabling them to improve the quality of their products and increase the productivity of their systems. Biological engineering (also biosystems engineering and bioengineering) deals with engineering biological processes in general. It is a broad-based engineering discipline that also may involve product design, sustainability and analysis of biological systems. In other words, Bioengineering is a discipline that applies engineering principles to biological systems for the purpose of developing new technologies of services to improve the living standards of societies.
It exploits the new developments in molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology, cell metabolism and engineering principles and applies them in order to understand living systems and to bring solutions various problems associated with these systems. This book presents leading research in both areas.