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.