What is Biotechnology?

It is very hard give a good definition on the term biotechnology. Stedman's Medical Dictionary defines biotechnology as "The field devoted to applying the techniques of biochemistry, cellular biology, biophysics, and molecular biology to addressing practical issues related to human beings, agriculture, and the environment." Whereas The On-line Medical Dictionary defines biotechnolgy as "The fusion of biology and technology. Biotechnology is the application of biological techniques to product research and development. In particular, biotechnology involves the use by industry of recombinant DNA, cell fusion, and new bioprocessing techniques. Biotechnology is expected to become increasingly important in the 21^st century."

The problem is that everyone (or different countries) define biotechnology differently, therefore almost everyone have a different preception on the term Biotechnology. In its broadest form, it can be used to include most biology research, although it generally refers to research related to genetically modified organisms (GMO), in addition to many traditional uses, such as wine brewing. Biotechnology Online by Biotechnology Australia says "Using living things to create products or to do tasks for human beings is a general description of biotechnology."

Strictly speaking, all of these definitions found online are correct. As far as we are aware, there aren't any consensus in the scientific community on the definition of biotechnology, hence, as long as it is related to living organisms. Most likely, it can be considered biotechnology in one way or another.

Wikepedia's biotechnology web page has some information on the history and definitions of Biotechnology while Biotechnology Australia's site also contain information specific to Australia.

What is Food Engineering?

Food is certainly very important to us for our survival, keeping us healthy and providing energy for our routine life. There are always new and seemly healthier products coming into the market and more local industries are becoming international each year. Today's life has become more “busy” and more and more people are relying on ready to serve and processed food. Awareness of consumers towards the food quality and increasing demand of ‘nutritional’ food products have pressurized food industries to produce the top-quality product, which is still economical. This is a real market-driven challenge to both industrial as well as academic food researchers.

In last two decades, food engineering has been a very important research field due to vast and changing demand from consumers. In spite of a huge research and development, there are still considerable difficulties involved in converting many fundamental ideas into practice. Engineering principles have been widely explored and improvised towards the better understanding of relationships between the process engineering and materials properties. A food manufacturing sector has brought engineering principles closer to our heart which seemed “far-off” in the past. In fact, food engineering principles are closely related to chemical and material engineering principles and other science fields such as microbiology, physics and chemistry. Incorporation of computational tools into food research for mathematical analysis of food products and processes have significantly benefited to understand food engineering. Study of food engineering principles from different perspectives and their application to analyzing, predicting and designing a food process is an important step for the advancement of food engineering. Opportunities still exist in a food research field for developing better engineering practice to produce top-quality and nutritional food products.

Our History

Our group led by Professor Xiao Dong Chen, was established in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Monash University (Clayton Campus) in mid-April 2006. Prior to that, our group was located in the Chemical and Materials Engineering Department at the The University of Auckland. As a result of Prof. Chen's relocation, several students who used to be enrolled in The University of Auckland have been transferred to Monash University.

About the University

In 2006, Monash University was ranked at 38 in The Times Higher Education Supplement's world university rankings, ahead of the University of New South Wales and the University of Queensland, and behind the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University. More information on various aspects of the University can be found in Monash University's web site.

Objectives

Our goal as a group is to work in a collaborative and enjoyable environment to explore, examine and develop technologies that can be utilized commercially.

What do we do @ BFE?

The Biotechnology and Food Engineering Group (www.innova-bfe.com), led by Professor Xiao Dong Chen in Chemical Engineering Department, is aimed at the development of innovative processing technologies, product evaluation tools, and value-enhanced food and bio-products. The focus is fundamental, scientific study of the process-product interactions. Rigorous engineering and materials science approaches are taken wherever appropriate together with detailed mathematical modeling of the processes. The group is unique in that it has a strong focus in applications and the generation of Intellectual Properties.

Fermentation is a complex process that traditionally lacks good monitoring and effect control strategy. Artificial neural networks have been explored to successfully employ ‘soft’ sensor for biomass measurements. Gentle culturing systems (bioreactors with low shear) are being developed to cater a growing interest in larger scale pharmaceutical production, thereby avoiding cell damages. How the human stomach and intestinal tract functions (chemical, physical and biological) affect the release of the encapsulated drugs and how designed functional foods work in human body is also being investigated. Drugs can be taken orally and by injection, some of them can also be administered through skin (transdermal drug delivery). The techniques that have lower risk of skin damage are being looked at while maintaining high permeation of the drug compounds through skin. Furthermore, systems that allow controlled release of drug to be at the ideal path are also being look at.

In order to avoid thermally induced damages to the bioactivity of a functional food or high value bioactive materials (drugs), a routine for producing these products under sub-zero temperatures is being investigated. For food materials such as milk, juices etc, freeze concentration can maintain the best qualities including flavor very effectively. Currently, a freeze concentration technology is being evaluated for on-farm milk concentration to reduce the transportation cost and related costs or damages to the environment. On-farm capturing of bioactive compounds such as milk proteins that are of extremely high value could be extracted on farm to add values to the farming operations. Large scale spray drying actions are modeled in the lab scale and predicted using advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics to enable dairy plants to operate much more efficiently and produce superior products.

Frying of a potato chip or crisps, is being improved through vacuum frying and some pre-treatment techniques that allow the oil content to be reduced substantially to reduce health risks in these deep fried products.

Food liquids and solids can be heated and thermally sterilized using resistance heating and microwave heating, compared with conventional methods such as steam heating. The non-thermal sterilization techniques, such as high pressure processing, are also being seriously evaluated for large scale applications in the food industry. A new Ohmic heater has been invented recently and tested which has a much reduced fouling tendency. A range of chemical solutions for Cleaning-in-Place in the dairy industry has been evaluated for their efficacy in removing the protein deposits from heat exchanger surfaces.

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