Advances in biotechnology underpin developments in areas that we have taken for granted: health, food and the environment. These areas are global challenges, and it is to advances in biotechnology that we are looking for entirely new approaches and solutions for existing problems. Biotechnology involves creating and developing technologies, products and processes that combat disease, facilitate the production of existing and entirely novel foodstuffs and help better care for our environment.

This course is for you if you: have an interest in how organisms can be cultured and manipulated to provide useful foods and medicines; wish to study how to optimise product development and purification; want to understand how we can manipulate genes or gene expression to improve production of useful compounds; or want to contribute effectively to ethical issues associated with biotechnology.

During this course, you will help shape the future of biotechnology; study the manipulation of living organisms in the birthplace of Darwin; walk Darwin’s thinking path at The Mount while pondering how we can use the principles of evolution to improve food and drug production; and sit in the library where Darwin was schooled.