Pharmaceutical biotechnology: Chemical biotechnology: Web alert

A selection of World Wide Web sites relevant to papers published in this issue of Current Opinion in Biotechnology.     

Pharmaceutical biotechnology, Chemical biotechnology: Web alert

A selection of World Wide Web sites relevant to papers published in this issue of Current Opinion in Biotechnology.     

Fungal biotechnology

Fungi are used in many industrial processes, such as the production of enzymes, vitamins, polysaccharides, polyhydric alcohols, pigments, lipids, and glycolipids. Some of these products are produced commercially while others are potentially valuable in biotechnology. Fungal secondary metabolites are extremely important to our health and nutrition and have tremendous economic impact. In addition to the multiple reaction sequences of fermentations, fungi are extremely useful in carrying out biotransformation processes. These are becoming essential to the fine-chemical industry in the production of single-isomer intermediates. Recombinant DNA technology, which includes yeasts and other fungi as hosts, has markedly increased markets for microbial enzymes. Molecular manipulations have been added to mutational techniques as a means of increasing titers and yields of microbial processes and in the discovery of new drugs. Today, fungal biology is a major participant in global industry. Moreover, the best is yet to come as genomes of additional species are sequenced at some level (cDNA, complete genomes, expressed sequence tags) and gene and protein arrays become available.     

Animal biotechnology

Biotechnology has taken two directions in efforts to speed up animal production above the rates achievable by selective breeding. Recombinant DNA methods have been used to engineer protein gene products for direct administration to livestock, as in recombinant growth hormone to stimulate lactation in dairy cows or yield faster-growing, leaner carcasses in meat animals. Cloned cellulolytic genes have been inserted into ruminal microorganisms with a view to improving ruminant nutrition. The other direction is to use advanced breeding technologies to enhance performance. These include laboratory culture of large numbers of viable embryos for non-surgical transfer to surrogate mothers, development of methods for sexing sperm and embryos, cloning embryos by nuclear transplantation and gene transfer to create livestock with superior performance traits. In all cases material progress will depend upon a deeper understanding of the underlying physiological and developmental control mechanisms and public confidence that due regard is being paid to animal welfare, and to social and environmental implications.     

Microbial biotechnology

For thousands of years, microorganisms have been used to supply products such as bread, beer and wine. A second phase of traditional microbial biotechnology began during World War I and resulted in the development of the acetone-butanol and glycerol fermentations, followed by processes yielding, for example, citric acid, vitamins and antibiotics. In the early 1970s, traditional industrial microbiology was merged with molecular biology to yield more than 40 biopharmaceutical products, such as erythropoietin, human growth hormone and interferons. Today, microbiology is a major participant in global industry, especially in the pharmaceutical, food and chemical industries.     

Environmental biotechnology

There is an increasing interest in environmental biotechnology owing to a worldwide need to feed the world's growing population and to maintain clean soil, air and water. The major technological developments are in plant and microbial biology. Plants can be more readily engineered for resistances that enhance yield or produce new products whereas microorganisms are exploited for their catalytic diversity and ease of genetic engineering.     

Safe biotechnology

Summary The Working Party on Safety in Biotechnology of the European Federation of Biotechnology reported [Künzi M, et al. Safe Biotechnology (1) — General considerations. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 21:1–6] on the classification of human pathogens and other microorganisms. It is proposed to relate the various risk classes of these organisms to the categories of physical containment for recombinant DNA (rDNA) organisms according to the OECD report [OECD Report (1986) Recombinant DNA Safety Considerations, Paris].In view of the differences in the numbering systems of the EFB for risk classes (1–4) and the OECD system of Good Industrial Large Scale Practice (GILSP) and containment categories 1–3, the former have been given alternative names. Relationships of the EFB-Classification of Microorganisms according to risk and OECD safety precautions have been defined (Table 1).Report prepared by the Working Party on Safety in Biotechnology of the European Federation of Biotechnology (EFB)     

Microalgae biotechnology

Microalgae mass cultures combine attributes of both agriculture (plant photosynthesis) and industrial fermentations (suspended culture growth). However this combination is not necessarily favorable. Microbial fermentations provide greatly superior volumetric productivities (100 times higher or more) and cell concentrations (over 10-fold) than the large volume ponds used for algal cultivation. Agriculture is superior to microalgal cultivation because of much lower capital costs and its ability to derive CO₂ from the atmosphere. On the other hand, microalgae can use poor drainage soils and saline or low quality waters, generally unsuitable for agriculture and sites exist where climate, topography, water and (most importantly) low cost (⋍$100/metric tonne) CO₂ are available for microalgae production. In addition, microalgal production systems must find niches of unique or specialized products that neither agriculture nor industrial microbiology can produce efficiently.