Bioprocessing industries contribute to waste management by valorization of organic waste, but at the same time, also end up generating a lot of solid, liquid, and gaseous waste. Many bioprocessing industries like biopharmaceutical industries, biochemical industries, bio-based food industries, and biofuel production industries often end up contaminating the environment with single-use plastic, liquid effluents, and greenhouse gas emissions. This waste, if accumulated, can cause negative impact on terrestrial and aquatic life as well as the environment. It is the need of the hour to manage the waste efficiently to save the environment from further deterioration. Many methods have been developed that manage waste by converting it into value-added products. The current predicament of the environment calls for the life-cycle assessment of all goods being used to manufacture new value-added products via bioprocessing so that their potential to cause harm to the environment in their entire course of life can be evaluated. The present processes of development need to be made more sustainable. This calls for the incorporation of a circular bioeconomy that focuses on the principles of minimization, reuse, recycle, and remanufacture to ensure that economic development remains environmentally friendly. This chapter gives an insight into the different types of bioprocessing industries, their contribution to waste, the effects they have on the environment and different strategies to manage and dispose of the waste, ensuring a more sustainable development.

In the past century, recombinant DNA technology (RDT) was only an idea that certain traits in live beings may be altered by manipulating the expression of target genes. This field has made significant contributions to human progress in the modern age. This technology has a wide range of applications and has the potential to improve many elements of life, such as changing health, improving food resources, and building resistance to a variety of detrimental environmental effects. Critical proteins required for health concerns and dietary needs can be produced safely, inexpensively, and inadequate quantities using this technique. Bioentrepreneurs look for commercial value in the technologies they utilize to undertake biotechnology research. Entrepreneurship and biotechnology are closely connected. The scientists Stanley Cohen of Stanford University and University of California San Francisco created the first rDNA molecules and this marks the beginning of genetic engineering. The most essential tool utilized by geneticists is rDNA. There would be no genetic engineering without rDNA technology. In recent years, a considerable number of articles in the business literature have studied biotechnology at the regional, corporate, and individual levels. This book chapter will encourage an entrepreneur to explore the fascinating field of biotechnology. This chapter gives insight into the fundamentals of RDT, genetic engineering, polymerase chain reaction and its applications, as well as the relationship of these technologies with bioentrepreneurship and the recombinant DNA technology market-growth and trends are also discussed.

Biomolecules are able to communicate with each other by physical contacts and interactions. These interactions are mostly captured through experimental methods, such as X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, and other indirect methods. However, the cost and time involved in quantifying the interactions is a limiting step. An alternative method is to use computational methods to build and validate interactions between two biomolecules. Molecular docking is one such powerful computational method to analyze the interactions molecules have with each other. The widely used application of molecular docking is in drug design. However, protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid interactions can be predicted as well. Here, we detail the general methodology of molecular docking and its various flavors. Also, we delve deeper into the utility and application of molecular docking, which will be a valuable reference for researchers in biology and biotechnology.

Enzymes are biological origin. Most of the enzymes are multiple folded globular proteins, which are water soluble by forming colloids like suspension, unlike the fibrous or membrane protein. The enzymes are also known as biocatalysts involved in biochemical reactions like digestion, absorption, respiration, reproduction, and growth and development. Enzyme technology is basically the practice of isolation, purification, and characterization of enzyme for human use and other industrial purposes. The enzymes can be used in different forms (soluble, tablet, or immobilized) for clinical application. Enzymes can be applicable in very diversified field like food preservation, human health, food production, washing powders, textile manufacture, leather industry, paper industry, medical applications, and scientific research. This chapter includes information about assay and application of industrial enzymes.

Microorganisms are source of many industrially important enzymes, proteins, and biochemicals. They require different nutritional and culture conditions for their growth and the production of desired products. Optimization of required parameters using statistical design is an effective time-saving approach. Immobilization methods have been a powerful tool to increase the stability and reusability of biocatalysts. Different methods have been reported to modify and engineer microbes for increased productivity. Use of mutagenesis such as physical, chemical, molecular biology-based site-directed mutagenesis, and directed evolution may help to improve biocatalyst potential (activity, stability, and specificity). Co-culture strategies are also getting attention as approaches in molecular biology (construction of long metabolic pathway and cultivation of nonculturable microbes, etc.) alone are not able to solve many problems. The above techniques can lead to the development of a highly productive biocatalytic system for industrial applications.

Downstream processing refers to the recovery and the purification of biosynthetic products. Downstream processing constitutes a critical step in manufacturing of pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics, hormones, antibodies and vaccines and enzymes with regards to product purity, cost, and environmental impact. There are different purification techniques used for purification of biomolecules. However, application of purification techniques is dependent on physicochemical properties of the biomolecule of interest and its desired purity. The current chapter covers purification techniques such as ammonium sulfate precipitation, ultrafiltration, three phase portioning, aqueous two-phase extraction, ion exchange, gel permeation, affinity, expanded bed chromatography, polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and chromate-focusing. Integration of various nonchromatographic techniques with chromatographic techniques during bioprocessing leads to eliminating several intermediate steps and producing a commercially feasible process.

Bio-based products are those that are made entirely or partially from biomass. Bioproducts are significant because the biomass utilized in their production provides an alternative to petroleum and petrochemicals, both of which have substantial environmental consequences. Bio-based products will alter agricultural commodity economics, politics, and commerce all across the world. Marketing is a continuous strategy that aids the growth of products and businesses. In today’s industry, green marketing is quite vital. It is recognized as a crucial strategy for encouraging long-term growth. Current marketing methods, on the other hand, primarily target the green niche market, but green products are rarely presented in a way that catches their interest. Effective product marketing communication plays an important role in delivering the bioproducts to the target customers.

Business is a venture undertaken toward making profit and it involves many operations which are characterized by various forms of risks. Therefore, it is highly important to conduct viability evaluation of a business before embarking on it. The process of assessing the viability of a business is called a feasibility study or feasibility analysis and in order to conduct the same, a variety of information is required. Hence, the discussion in this first study unit revolves around assessment of business viability and various sources of generating the required information for a feasibility study.

Sterilization is a process to make any material free from living forms such as microorganisms either by eliminating them or killing them. The removal, killing, or deactivation of all forms of life and other biological agents are the main aims of the sterilization process. In ancient times, several techniques of sterilization like drying and salting were practiced traditionally by humans. Heating has been one of the oldest and the most used techniques of sterilization since the beginning of human civilization. But over the period of time, some microorganisms have become heat resistant, so there was a need for various other sterilization methods. Among the various physical methods, temperature, pressure, and radiation all play crucial roles in different kinds of physical sterilization. Sterilization is required for certain surgical apparatus and instruments, industrial and laboratory equipment which require hygiene and an environment fully free of microbial life.

Bio-entrepreneurship is an emerging field, around the world countries are allocating resources for this thriving field. As more and more discoveries are being made and microbes’ potential is uncovered through research more products are commercially available in markets. However, there is no formal structure that has been adopted to remove the hurdles in industry development. One of the biggest challenges to the bioprocessing industry is the lack of research on the scale-up process. This chapter is aimed at identifying the importance of the scale-up and the strategies to achieve it. From idea generation to research, laboratory-scale until commercial production several challenges have been addressed in the paper.