4 • Impacts of Applied Genetics— Micro-Organisms, Plants, and Animals 
ciopend on fermentation— a technology in which 
substances produced by micro-organisms can 
l)e obtained in large quantities. Applications to 
plants and animals, which are biologically more 
complex and more difficult to manipulate suc- 
cessfully, will take longer to develop. 
Biotechnology 
Biotechnology— the use of living organisms or 
their components in industrial processes— is 
possible because micro-organisms naturally pro- 
duce countless substances during their lives. 
Some of these substances have proved commer- 
cially valuable. A number of different industries 
ha\ e learned to use micro-organisms as natural 
factories, cultivating populations of the best 
producers under conditions designed to en- 
hance their abilities. 
Applied genetics can play a major role in im- 
proving the speed, efficiency, and productivity 
of these biological systems. It permits the ma- 
nipulation, or engineering, of the micro-orga- 
nisms’ genetic material to produce the desired 
characteristics. Genetic engineering is not in 
itself an industry, but a technique used at the 
laboratory level that allows the researcher to 
modify the hereditary apparatus of the cell. The 
population of altered identical cells that grows 
from the first changed micro-organism is, in 
turn, used for various industrial processes. (See 
figure 1.) 
The first major commercial effects of the ap- 
plication of genetic engineering will be in the 
pharmaceutical, chemical, and food processing 
industries. Potential commercial applications of 
value to the mining, oil recovery, and pollution 
control industries— which may desire to use ma- 
nipulated micro-organisms in the open environ- 
ment-are still somewhat speculative. 
The pharmaceutical industry 
FINDINGS 
The pharmaceutical industry has been the 
first to take advantage of the potentials of ap- 
plied molecular genetics. Ultimately, it will 
probably benefit more than any other, with the 
largest percentage of its products depending on 
advances in genetic technologies. Already, 
micro-organisms have been engineered to pro- 
duce human insulin, interferon, growth hor- 
mone, urokinase (for the treatment of blood 
clots), thymosin-a 1 (for controlling the immune 
response), and somatostatin (a brain hormone). 
(See figure 2.) 
The products most likely to be affected by 
genetic engineering in the next 10 to 20 years 
are nonprotein compounds like most antibiotics, 
and protein compounds such as enzymes and 
antibodies, and many hormones and \ accines. 
Improvements can be made both in the prod- 
ucts and in the processes by which they are pro- 
duced. Process costs may be lowered and even 
entirely new products developed. 
The most advanced applications today are in 
the field of hormones. While certain hormones 
have already proved useful, the testing of 
others has been hindered by their scarcit\' and 
high cost. Of 48 human hormones that ha\c 
been identified so far as possible candidates for 
production by genetically engineered mici'o- 
organisms, only 10 are used in current medical 
practice. The other 38 are not, j)artly hc'cause 
they have been available in such limited (|uan- 
tities that tests of their therapeutic \alue ha\(> 
not been possible. 
Genetic technologies also open up lunv ap- 
proaches for vaccine development for such in- 
tractable parasitic and viral diseases as aiiK'hic 
dysentery, trachoma, hepatitis, and malaria. ,\t 
present, the vaccine most likely to h(? produced 
is for foot-and-mouth disease in animals. How - 
ever, should any one of the \ accin(!s foi- liimian 
diseases become available, the social, economic, 
and political consequences of a d(U'reas(* in mor- 
bidity and mortality would he significant. .Main 
of these diseases are particularly i)re\alcnt in 
less industrialized countries; the? dc\ ('li)|)mcnts 
of vaccines for them may profoundly affect the 
lives of tens of millions of people. 
