Biotechnology: Potentials And Limitations: Report Of The Dahlem Workshop On Biotechnology: Potentials And Limitations Berlin 1985, March 24-29 (dahlem Workshop Report)

hurdle will be in the latter area. The technological hurdles will be formi­ dable but will not limit what happens: once the basic ideas are available, the technology will be developed. The unique part of biotechnology will be to imagine what the possibilities are. There was a discussion in several of the groups on the problems of intro­ ducing a novel science into a social and economic context. What biotech­ nologists are learning on this matter is not novel, although that does not make it any less important or difficult. People in the development of elec­ tronics and computers, in the pharmaceutical industry, and in many other types of industry that have grown from university research have had to face these problems in the past. It is the old situation of having to reinvent the wheel again and again. There is one aspect on which biotechnology seems to have handled this inherent difficulty better than some of our predecessor technologies: the people in the biotechnology companies by and large take a rather academic approach to free communication with one another at meetings such as this and open publication of many of their basic findings in the literature. This seems unique and certainly is different from the experience of the recent Silicone Valley Industry, which in other ways tries to emulate an academic environment, but not in open and free publication. Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction....Pages 1-4 Technical Approaches....Pages 5-18 Cloning and Expressing Genes for Clinically Useful Proteins....Pages 19-40 Synthetic Genes....Pages 41-54 Protein Engineering....Pages 55-70 Microbiology and Industrial Products....Pages 71-81 Fermentation Products: Physiological and Bioenergetic Considerations....Pages 83-97 Bioactive Microbial Secondary Metabolites....Pages 99-112 Technological Processes for Biotechnological Utilization of Microorganisms....Pages 113-126 Animals and Medicines....Pages 127-138 Vaccines - the Synthetic Antigen Approach....Pages 139-154 A Modern Approach to Live Vaccines: Recombinant Poxviruses....Pages 155-164 The Future Role in Medicine of Proteins Made by Genetic Engineering....Pages 165-177 Some Applications of Modern Immunological Techniques....Pages 179-183 Gene Transfer into Mouse Stem Cells....Pages 185-198 Plants and Agriculture....Pages 199-221 Plant Gene Engineering and Plant Agriculture....Pages 223-239 Secondary Products....Pages 241-257 Plant-Microbe Interactions....Pages 259-273 Importance of the Rhizosphere in Plant-Microbe Interactions....Pages 275-282 The Production and Utilization of Lignocellulose....Pages 283-291 Social and Ethical Considerations for Biotechnology....Pages 293-294 Back Matter....Pages 295-316 Dahlem-Konferenzen. Held and Published on Behalf of the Stifterverb. fur die Deutsche Wissenschaft