Journal of Biotechnology 118S1 (2005) S1–S189 Abstracts 12. European Congress on Biotechnology 1. Keynote Lectures 2 White biotechnology: Science, fiction and reality Dr. Oskar Zelder BASF Aktiengesellschaft In the last 20 years biotechnology has made tremendous progress in its different application fields: Red Biotechnology, the use of bio- logical methods for medical purposes, is firmly established in the development of new drugs. The use of plant or green biotechnology is under controversial discussion in politics and public. Neverthe- less, genetically modified herbicide and insect resistant crops are cultivated to a large extent. Industrial Biotechnology, now often named White Biotechnology, seems widely underestimated in the public perception. It includes all industrial processes for the produc- tion of chemical products and enzymes, which fully or partly rely on the biological toolbox of nature. White Biotechnology processes are carried out in a contained environment, typically in a bioreac- tor in a dedicated industrial plant. Well-known examples are the fermentative productions of antibiotics, amino acids, vitamins and enzymes, products related to medical, food and feed applications. Many products like the amino acids glutamic acid, lysine, threonine and tryptophane are exclusively produced using microbes in large scale industrial processes. In other cases, like the water soluble vita- min B2, biotechnological processes successfully replaced chemical productions, due to lower costs and improved ecoefficiency. In con- trast to this, most industrial chemicals and polymers are produced by chemical synthesis based on oil and gas. However, there are some examples for bioproducts among industrial chemicals. The solvents acetone and butanol, for instance, were manufactured by fermenta- tion for several decades in the last century. Since the 1950s these fermentations have been replaced by more efficient and cheaper chemical synthesis. Recently, new pilot and production processes for biopolymers like PHA or biomonomers like 1,3-propanediol or lactic acid were announced by different companies. Currently, ethanol is by far the largest White Biotech product by volume. In Brazil, where Bioethanol is used as liquid transportation fuel, the annual production is in the range of 15 Mio m 3 . Bioethanol is of growing importance also in the United States. Business consultants predict a tremendous growth of biotechnological products within the chemical industry. High prices for crude oil, dropping prices for renewable resources, and scientific progresses nourish the expecta- tion that Industrial Biotechnology will replace many bulk chemicals. Is this realistic? Will we switch from a petrochemical industry to a biobased chemistry within the next years? Based on economic con- siderations it can be stated that this is a long term goal. To achieve this it remains a scientific challenge to make renewable raw mate- rials available for competitive bioproduction of bulk chemicals at low costs. Conversion of lignocellulosic material to fermentation sugar may be a solution. Also green biotechnology can contribute to the supply of cheap fermentation raw materials. Innovative ideas for downstream processing or further chemical conversion of fer- mentation products are required to enter the chemical value chains. Furthermore, the identification of new higher value bioproducts is a chance for short term successes in White Biotechnology. Enzyme and protein engineering has the potential to create new biomolecules, metabolic engineering can contribute to develop new metabolic path- ways, may be even for unnatural compounds. 3 Systems biology: Transforming biology and medicine Leroy Hood President, Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, Washington, USA The advent of the Human Genome Project has transformed biol- ogy by providing a genetics parts list of all genes and proteins, by fueling the contention biology is an informational science, and by catalyzing the emergence of biological information (e.g., rapid DNA sequencing or DNA chips). From this has emerged a new approach to biology termed systems biology—centered on the idea one can study biological systems by delineating the relationships of all of their component elements—and, hence, come to understand the resulting systems properties. I will discuss these important points, give several examples of systems approaches, and conclude by discussing the pro- found change systems biology will engender in medicine—moving us toward a predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine. 4 Interpreting the human and C. elegans genomes Robert H. Waterston , Zhirong Bao, John I. Murray, The Chimpanzee Sequencing Consortium Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA 0168-1656/$ – see front matter © 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.jbiotec.2005.06.005