About

Since ancient times, microorganisms have been utilized for what we now recognize as biotechnology applications, starting with beer and wine-making, leavening dough for bread and pastries, and preserving food by pickling.  The multibillion dollar modern fermentation and biocatalytic industries that grew out of these practices produce small molecule “natural products” to be used as drugs, pesticides and fine chemicals including biodegradable plastics, and provide us with amino acids, vitamins, solvents and other industrial chemicals.  Microbial fermentation and biocatalysis (the use of microorganisms as catalysts for chemical reactions) also represent our best hopes to produce sustainable, environmentally responsible biofuels, and constitute a fast growing segment of the biotechnology industry.  Microbial fermentation is also used to produce recombinant proteins as drugs or industrial enzymes, and can be used to manufacture antibodies and nucleic acids for diagnosis and treatment of diseases.  Drug discovery in the pharmaceutical and agribusiness industries, and the development of novel or cheaper industrial chemicals and reagents are unimaginable without utilizing microbial “chemical factories”.