Biotechnology and medicine of the future

The practice of biology and medicine has been revolutionized during the past ten years by the advent of three biotechnologies--recombinant DNA techniques, the monoclonal antibody technology, and the development of microchemical instrumentation, machines that permit the rapid and effective synthesis and sequence analysis of proteins and genes. In this article, these powerful biotechnologies will be discussed, with particular emphasis on microchemical instrumentation, a major focus of my efforts for the past 15 years. I will also discuss two fundamental problems in modern medicine that are being explored in my laboratory using these techniques--genetic engineering of the nervous system and the mapping and sequencing of the human genome.