Chapter 3 
Genetic Engineering and 
the Fermentation Technologies 
Biotechnology — an introduction 
Biotechnology imoKes the use in industry of 
Ii\ ing organisms or tlieir compotients (such as 
enzymes). It includes the introduction of geneti- 
calh' engineered micro-organisms into a \ ariety 
of industrial [)rocesses. 
rhe [)harmaceutical, chemical, and food proc- 
essing industries, in that order, are most likely 
to take ad\ antage of ad\ ances in molecular ge- 
netics. Others that might also he affected, al- 
though not as immediateh', are the mining, 
crude oil recoxery, and pollution control in- 
dustries. 
Because nearly all the products of hiotechnol- 
og\' are manufactured hy micro-organisms, fer- 
mentation is an indispensihle element of hio- 
technology's suppoi't system. 'I'he pharmaceuti- 
cal industry, the earliest beneficiary of the new 
knowledge, is already producing pharmaceu- 
ticals derixed from geneticallx' engineei'ed 
micro-organisms. The chemical industry xx ill 
take longer to make use of biotechnology, hut 
the ultimate impact max’ he enormous. The food 
processing industry xxill probably he affected 
last. 
This report e.xamines many of the pharma- 
ceutical industry’s products in detail, as xxell as 
Fermentation 
There are sex eral xx ays that D\A can be cut, 
spliced, or otherwise altered. But engineered 
D\,A by itself is a static molecule. To be any- 
thing more than the end of a laboratory exer- 
cise, the molecule must be integrated into a sys- 
tem of production; to hax e an impact on society 
at large, it must become a component of an in- 
dustrial or otherxvise useful process. 
The process that is central to the economic 
some of the secondary impacts that the technol- 
ogies might haxe. Because the chemical and 
food industries xx ill feel the major impact of bio- 
technology later, specific impacts are less cer- 
tain and particular pi'oducts ai’e less identifi- 
able. The mining, oil recoxery, and pollution 
control industries are also candidates for the 
use of genetic technologies. Hoxx ex er, because 
of technical, scientific, legal, and economic un- 
certainties, the success of apjjlications in these 
industries is more speculatix e. 
The generalizations made xvith respect to 
each of the industries should be x iexxed as just 
that— generalizations. Because a xvide array of 
products can be made biologically, and because 
different factors influence each instance of pro- 
duction, isolated examples of success may ap- 
pear throughout the industries at approximate- 
ly the same time. In almost ex'ery case, specific 
predictions can only be made on a product-by- 
product basis; for xx hile it may be true that bio- 
technologx'’s oxerall impact will be profound, 
identifying many of the products most likely to 
be affected remains speculatix e. 
success of biotechnology has been around for 
centuries. It is fermentation, essentially the 
process used to make xvine and beer. It can also 
produce organic chemical compounds using 
micro-organisms or their enzymes. 
Ox er the years, the scope and efficiency of 
the fermentation process has been gradually im- 
proxed and refined. Txvo processes now exist, 
both of xvhich xvill beneft from genetic engi- 
49 
