Organisation of biotechnological information into knowledge

The success of biotechnological research, development and marketing depends to a large extent on the international transfer of information and on the ability to organise biotechnology information into knowledge. To increase the efficiency of information-based approaches, an information strategy has been developed and consists of the following stages: definition of the problem, its structure and sub-problems; acquisition of data by targeted processing of computer-supported bibliographic, numeric, textual and graphic databases; analysis of data and building of specialized in-house information systems; information processing for structuring data into systems, recognition of trends and patterns of knowledge, particularly by information synthesis using the concept of information density; design of research hypotheses; testing hypotheses in the laboratory and/or pilot plant; repeated evaluation and optimization of hypotheses by information methods and testing them by further laboratory work. The information approaches are illustrated by examples from the university-industry joint projects in biotechnology, biochemistry and agriculture.