Study of Biotechnology Applied to Research and Development

摘要

This report contains summaries of a conference on biosensors, along with the deliberations of the Commitee on Biotechology Applied to Naval Needs. For the purposes of this report, biosensors are defined as devices that utilize some principles or elements of biology, broadly defined, to generate a signal in response to a specific material substance or condition. The committee considered that the appropriate areas of biology to consider were the study of receptors, enzymology, the use of DNA as a detector, immunologly, and the development of synthetic analogs to the relevant natural biological reactions. In contrast to a recent report prepared by the NRC's Board on Army Science and Technology, entitled Assessment of Chemical and Biological Sensor Technologies, which was written in response to a very narrowly and sharply defined charge, the present report focuses on basic biology relevant to biosensors.