50 • Impacts of Applied Genetics— Micro-Organisms, Plants, and Animals 
neering. In fermentation technology, living or- 
ganisms serve as miniature factories, convert- 
ing raw materials into end products. In enzyme 
technology, biological catalysts extracted from 
those living organisms are used to make the 
products. 
Fermentation industries 
The food processing, chemical, and pharma- 
ceutical industries are the three major users of 
fermentation today. The food industry was the 
first to exploit micro-organisms to produce 
alcoholic beverages and fermented foods. Mid- 
16th century records describe highly sophisti- 
cated methods of fermentation technology. Heat 
processing techniques, for example, anticipated 
pasteurization by several centuries. 
In the early 20th century, the chemical in- 
dustry began to use the technology to produce 
organic solvents like ethanol, and enzymes like 
amylase, used at the time to treat textiles. The 
chemical industry’s interest in fermentation 
arose as the field of biochemistry took shape 
around the turn of the century. But it was not 
until World War I that wartime needs for the 
organic solvent acetone— to produce the cor- 
dite used in explosives— substantially increased 
research into the potential of fermentation. 
Thirty years later after World War II, the phar- 
maceutical industry followed the chemical in- 
dustry’s lead, applying fermentation to the pro- 
duction of vitamins and new antibiotics. 
Today, approximately 200 companies in the 
United States and over 500 worldwide use 
fermentation technologies to produce a wide 
variety of products. Most use them as part of 
production processes, usually in food process- 
ing. But others manufacture either proteins, 
which can be considered primary products, or a 
host of secondary products, which these pro- 
teins help produce. For genes can make en- 
zymes, which are proteins; and the enzymes 
can help make alcohol, methane, antibiotics, 
and many other substances. 
Proteins, the primary products, function as: 
• enzymes such as asparaginase which are 
used in the treatment of leukemia; 
• structural components, such as collagen, 
used in skin transplants following burn 
trauma; 
• certain hormones, such as insulin and 
human growth hormone; 
• substances in the immune system, such as 
antibodies and interferon: and 
• specialized functional components, such as 
hemoglobin. 
Fermentation technologies are so useful for pro- 
ducing proteins partly because these are the 
direct products of genes. But proteins (as en- 
zymes) can also be used in thousands of addi- 
tional conversions to produce practically any 
organic chemical and many inorganic ones as 
well: (See figure 16.) 
Figure 16.— Diagram of Products Available 
From Cells 
In (A) DNA directs the formation of a protein, such as in- 
sulin, which is itself the desired product. In (B), DNA directs 
the formation of an enzyme which, in turn, converts some 
raw material, such as sugar, to a product, such as ethanol. 
SOURCE: Office of Technology Assessment. 
