Early integration is the key to success in industrial biotechnology.
This is as true when a selected wild-type organism is put to work as
when an organism is engineered for a purpose.
The present volume Engineering and Manufacturing for Biotechnology
took advantage of the 9th European Congress on Biotechnology (Brussels,
Belgium, July 11-15, 1999): in the topics handled and in the expertise
of the contributors, the engineering science symposia of this congress
offered just what was needed to cover the important topic of integration
of process engineering and biological research.
The editors have solicited a number of outstanding contributions to
illustrate the intimate interaction between productive organisms and the
numerous processing steps running from the initial inoculation to the
packaged product. Upstream processing of the feed streams, selection of
medium components, product harvesting, downstream processing, and
product conditioning are just a few major steps. Each step imposes a
number of important choices. Every choice is to be balanced against time
to market, profitability, safety, and ecology.