Bioengineering

Bioengineering is a multidisciplinary field that brings engineering principles to medicine and biology. It focuses on living systems and aims to solve problems that threaten the health and life of living beings, while also exploring opportunities for their development. Bioengineering covers a wide range of areas because it incorporates insights from various engineering disciplines, such as chemistry, agriculture, electrical and mechanical engineering. It particularly involves studies related to the human genome and those of other organisms, the development of treatments, vaccines, and drugs for diseases, as well as the design and production of chips, artificial organs, and medical devices. In this way, bioengineering addresses a wide range of challenges related to living beings and their well-being.

History

The emergence of bioengineering dates back to the middle of the 20th century. It is regarded as a new, dynamic and promising future field despite being the only engineering discipline made of nothing after the second world war and involving so many studies due to the closeness of its development to present, constructing so many experiments and hundreds of discoveries. In the first period from 1940s to 1960s, primarly the first studies for kidney dialysis, followed by the development and implantation of the first artificial heart valve, the first successful human heart surgery assisted by a heart-lung machine, and the first external pacemaker laid the foundations for bioengineering. After these applications, Biomedical Engineering departments were established for the first time at the University of Virginia, Case Western Reserve University, Johns Hopkins University and Duke University. While all these developments were taking place, there were also some developments that encouraged bioengineering, the competence required for cell culture and the cultivation of cells in the laboratory environment increased, and in 1953, based on Rosalind Franklin's experimental data, the double helix structure of DNA was reported to the world by James Watson and Francis Crick. The era of modern bioengineering began in the 1970s with the emergence of recombinant DNA technology, which allowed the production of artificial DNA in the laboratory environment, and continued until today with the mapping of the entire human genome and the analysis of 50,000 to 100,000 genes with the international Human Genome Project, which took many years to build and was announced in the early 2000s. Today, with the increasing interest and awareness in this field, solutions to growing problems and diseases are being sought.

Branches and fields of Bioengineering

It operates in many different fields due to the fact that it is a multidisciplinary engineering. 

• Biomedical Engineering:   It forms the branches of bioengineering that focus on the medical field. This is the field that involves primarily designing and after manufacturing the new medical devices and artificial components- artificial organ, limb or body compositions that are related to the health of living beings.

• Agricultural Bioengineering: The area that is considered as the intersection of agricultural engineering and bioengineering aims to provide maximum efficiency in agriculture. It regulates the problems of diseases and low efficiency in plants with the understanding of molecular biology and biotechnology.

• Biomimetic: It is the field that aims to develop new materials and components by imitating living beings and nature in order to solve the problem of living beings

• Biochemistry: The branch of bioengineering that monitors and analyzes all of the chemical processes of the living being is a biological entity, including all the components and reactions.

• Genetic engineering: It provides to be made to the DNA of a living organism according to its needs or health. Vaccines, treatments and methods are enhanced against many diseases thanks to the application of genetic engineering on the human genome.

• Bioenvironmental Engineering: This is the field that unites the aims of bioengineering and environmental engineering. It aspires to eliminate or minimize any kind of threat in order to ensure that living things live in healthy, suitable and favorable conditions. For this purpose, it enables to increase sustainability by recycling waste in a way that benefits the environment, especially in factories and large production facilities.

• Synthetic Biology: It aims to rebuild or form functional biologic systems containing DNA, protein, and other organic materials in accordance with the needs of living systems with the engineering discipline.

• Biotechnology: Biotechnology, which is of great importance in the fields of science and medicine today, the main discipline leading all the branches of bioengineering. It builds a bridge between constantly developing technology adaptation of technology to living beings

Future of Bioengineering

Bioengineering is taking place today with its aim of solving the problem of living beings under all circumstances despite it being the field that is just  gaining recognition. In pursuit of this goal, the activities of bioengineering will continue in all conditions and at all times of life.