Genetic engineering: from a clone to a protein

摘要

October 15, 1980, was a date when the highest increase of the share price of one company was recorded on the world most powerful New York change - rates of shares of the company Genetech jumped by more than 2.5 times in only 20 minutes. This event was a grand entrance of a new technology into the global economy and it irreversibly established a brand new status of biology within the development of civilization. Genetech is one of the first companies within the field of molecular biotechnology that accomplished such an enormous commercial success no more than seven years upon the last discoveries in the series of scientific findings that had provided formulation of a new technology designated as genetic engineering or a recombinant DNA technology. Today, 20 years later, it can be rightfully claimed that expectations of the new technology are fulfilled: even if the qualitative shift it provided to fundamental research is disregarded, its direct commercial effects are very convincing - the total value of sold products produced by this technology exceeded the sum of 60 billions dollars in 2000. Let us cite market parameters of only some products manufactured by the application of genetic engineering: annual global consumption of recombinant human insulin amounts to approximately 4.6 tons only in the industrialized part of the world, while the annual sale of recombinant human erythropoietin, interferon's and a human growth hormone amount to 2, i.e. 1.5 billions dollars, respectively.