The answer has to do with the ways in which scientists are decoding and learning to manage life. They may be, for example, using high-powered computing equipment to analyze the genes of the human body, so that they might learn which specific genes do things like cause disease, and why. Or they might be in the laboratory, isolating and breeding microbes that break down chemicals and could help naturally clean our water supply. Other researchers look at food crops and carefully alter their genetic makeup to make them more resistant to disease and frost. The common element is the belief that society can be improved if we can use genetics to our advantage.
Biotechnology simply tries to find ways to hook into the ultimate machine.
One of the highest-profile efforts in biotechnology, for example, is in the field of genomics. Most people have probably heard that scientists across the country are trying to sequence the entire human genome. This massive undertaking would give us a complete catalog of every gene that occurs in humans. Such an achievement would be akin to revealing the blueprints for human life. As just one possibility, scientists could identify which genes are responsible for causing cells to become cancerous, which would make it easier to diagnose diseases and to design drugs to stop them.