What are some new discoveries, items, etc made thanks to biology or any of its sub-categories?

Question

I need to find a topic for a written report, and it needs to be about a new discovery, or a new thing made thanks to biology or any of its sub-categories, like biotechnology, etc. Any ideas or suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Salvador Luria is the person who discovered restriction enzymes. These bacterial proteins are able to cut nonself DNA at specific sequences. They are the basis of the work than led to transgenics. Human controlled horizontal gene transfer.
Certain diseases are due to single genes. Combine this with the ability to deliver a single gene in a vector and the science of gene therapy is conceived.

Answer 2

Since you are asking for new discoveries, I won't offer RNAi since that was elucidated back in the early 1990's. Microarrays are fairly recent, late 1990's, and can be used to determine the activity of all genes in the human genome or any other sequence genome for that matter. When I say activity I mean whether a gene is being made into mRNA, which is a descent but not great indicator as to whether the gene is being made into it's gene product, a protein. Although for many genes RNA is the stopping point. This is especially useful in cancer diagnosis and as a tool for treament and prognosis. Its biotechnology.