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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
When I come to the laboratory of my father, I usually see some plates lying on the tables. These plates contain colonies of bacteria. These colonies remind me of a city with many inhabitants. In each bacterium there is a king. He is very long, but skinny. The king has many servants. These are thick and short, almost like balls. My father calls the king DNA, and the servants enzymes…My father has discovered a servant who serves as a pair of scissors. If a foreign king invades a bacterium, this servant can cut him in small fragments, but he does not do any harm to his own king…
(Silvia, daughter of Werner Arber and ten years old at the time of the quote. From The Tale of the King and his Servants; Lindsten and Nobelstiftelsen, 1992)In the last 30 years we have seen a dramatic development in molecular biology research. Genetic information has been mapped in great detail for many different living organisms. We are able to examine gene expression, biochemical reactions and molecular interactions within the cell in a manner that was quite impossible 50 years ago. This basic research has had a great impact on many areas, including medicine and biotechnology. For instance, molecular details of many diseases such as cancer have been worked out, making new methods of diagnosis and therapy possible. In addition, pharmaceutically important proteins such as insulin may be produced in high yield. In the world of plants, crops have been genetically modified to achieve increased crop yields and resistance to insects, or to make them produce specific substances in large quantities.
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