Hi Kids,
Welcome to the Biotechnology Basics Activity Book. 

This is an activity book for young people like you about biotechnology —
a really neat topic. Why is it such a neat topic? Because biotechnology is helping to improve the health of the Earth and the
people who call it home. In this book, you will take a closer look
at biotechnology. You will see that biotechnology is being
used to figure out how to: 1) grow more food; 2) help
the environment; and 3) grow more nutritious food
that improves our health. As you work through
the puzzles in this book, you will learn more about
biotechnology and all of the wonderful ways it can
help people live better lives in a healthier world.
Have fun!

Hi Kids,

What is Biotechnology?
Biotechnology (by-o-tek-nawl-a-gee) is a big word, but it is easy to figure out what
it means if you just look closer! Bio is short for biology, which is the study of all living
things. Technology is another word for tools. Biotechnology then, is a tool that uses
biology to make new products. For example, agricultural biotechnology is a precise
way to make seeds with special qualities. These seeds will allow farmers to grow
plants that are more nutritious, more resistant to pests and more productive.
Biotechnology is a tool for looking closer at nature to find solutions that improve
the health of the Earth and its people.
Unscramble the letters below to spell the two words that make up the word, BIOTECHNOLOGY.
oyloibg ycoetlnogh
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
3
How does biotechnology work?
Biotechnology allows scientists to look closer at genes and make improvements in
them. Your body is composed of millions of individual units called cells. Within
each cell are genes that carry all of the information that allows your body to work
and determines how you look. You get your genes from your parents. This is why
you may look like your parents. All people, plants and animals inherit traits from
their parents through their genes.
One of the first people to study how traits are passed
from parents to their young was a monk in Austria
named Gregor Mendel. Almost 200 years ago, he used
plants to show how certain things such as flower size
and color are passed on from the parent to the offspring.
Biotechnology allows for scientists to study how plants
grow and how they react to the environment. As a result,
scientists can now insert a specific gene into a plant that will help it adapt to its
environment, make it more pest resistant, or even make it more nutritious.
How many new words can you make using the letters in BIOTECHNOLOGY? Use the following
scoring table to figure your points for each word and write that number beside the word.
3-letter word = 1 point 4-letter word = 2 points 5-letter word = 3 points
Add 1 point for each letter over 5
How many total points can you score?