Visions of a Biotech Empire On the Kazakh Steppe

摘要

ASTANA, KAZAKHSTAN--When Erlan Raman-culov moved from Colorado to Kazakhstan in 2004, he and his wife had one main objective: to raise their daughters in his native land. He took a position managing four struggling biological institutes in Almaty, thelargest city in this oil-rich Centra! Asian country. Sometimes, though, as the 38-year-old molecular biologist dealt with a stultifying bureaucracy, he wondered whether he'd erred in leaving the United States. He'd spent 11 years at Texas A&M University in College Station and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins, Colorado, becoming a topflight researcher on phages, viruses that infect bacteria.