"Scientific and industrial environments, every day more and more specialized and diverse, use biotechnology as a tool in their process to a greater or lesser extent. This diversity has in turn brought about the need for a system to classify biotechnology uses based on common features or final purpose. As a result, nowadays there exist five main groups in biotechnological applications, which have been identified by a color system"

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"The use of living organisms, their parts or by- products in industrial applications is on the basis of biotechnology. Examples of biotechnological use of microorganisms, such as alcoholic fermentation and bread making, have been registered since ancient times. From this perspective, even selecting and breeding productive plant and animal varieties for farming and livestock purposes throughout history could be considered biotechnology approaches.  Setting up and defining the processes of biological information maintenance and flow has prompted the expansion and growing of biotechnology applications. Scientific and industrial environments, every day more and more specialized and diverse, use biotechnology as a tool in their process to a greater or lesser extent. This diversity has in turn brought about the need for a system to classify biotechnology uses based on common features or final purpose. As a result, nowadays there exist five main groups in biotechnological applications, which have been identified by a color system.

Red biotechnology brings together all those biotechnology uses connected to medicine. Red biotechnology includes producing vaccines and antibiotics, developing new drugs, molecular diagnostics techniques, regenerative therapies and the development of genetic engineering to cure diseases through genetic manipulation. Some relevant examples of red biotechnology are cell therapy and regenerative medicine, gene therapy and medicines based on biological molecules such as therapeutic antibodies.

White biotechnology comprises all the biotechnology uses related to industrial processes - that is why it is also called ‘industrial biotechnology’. White biotechnology pays a special attention to design low resource-consuming processes and products, making them more energy efficient and less polluting than traditional ones. There can be found many examples of white biotechnology, such as the use of microorganisms in chemicals production, the design and production of new materials for daily use (plastics, textiles ...) and the development of new sustainable energy sources such as biofuels.

Grey biotechnology includes all those applications of biotechnology directly related to the environment. These applications can be split up into two main branches: biodiversity maintenance and contaminants removal. Regarding the first, it should be mentioned the application of molecular biology to genetic analysis of populations and species that are part of ecosystems, their comparison and classification and also cloning techniques aimed to preserve species and genome storage technologies. As for pollutants removal or bioremediation, grey biotechnology uses microorganisms and plants to isolate and dispose of different substances such as heavy metals and hydrocarbons, with the added possibility of subsequently making use of these substances or by-products from this activity.

Green biotechnology is focused on agriculture as working field. Green biotechnological approaches and applications include creating new plant varieties of agricultural interest, producing biofertilizers and biopesticides, using in vitro cultivation and cloning plantsThe first approach is the one to undergo further development and attract the most interest and social controversy. Producing modified plant varieties is based almost exclusively on transgenesis, or introducing genes of interest from another variety or organism into the plant. Three main objectives are pursued by using this technology. First, it is expected to get varieties resistant to pests and diseases -for example, currently used and marketed maize varieties resistant to pests such as corn stalk borer. Secondly, use of transgenic plants is aimed at developing varieties with improved nutritional properties (eg, higher content of vitamins). Finally, transgenesis in plants is also studied as a means to develop plant varieties able to act as bio-factories and produce substances of medical, biomedical or industrial interest in quantities easy to be isolated and purified.

Blue biotechnology is based on the exploitation of sea resources to create products and applications of industrial interest. Taking into account that the sea presents the greatest biodiversity, there is potentially a huge range of sectors to benefit from the use of this kind of biotechnology. Many products and applications from blue biotechnology are still object of study and research, although some of them are actually used on a daily basis.

No doubt using raw materials from the sea represents the most widespread blue biotechnology in many different sectors. These materials, mostly hydrocolloids and gellings are already being widely used in food, health, treatment, etc. Medicine and research are other major beneficiaries of development in blue biotechnology. Some marker molecules from marine organisms are now commonly used in research. Enzymatically active molecules useful in diagnostics and research have also been isolated from marine organisms. Some biomaterials and pharmacological or regeneratively active agents are being produced or investigated for their use in these sectors. Finally, sectors such as agriculture and cosmetics analyze the potential of blue biotechnology for its future development"