Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (Synthesis)

Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (Synthesis)
by Sally Smith Hughes

Buy new: $25.00 $20.53
39 used & new from $12.45

(Visit the Most Gifted in Biotechnology list for authoritative information on this product's current rank.)

Review & Description

In the fall of 1980, Genentech, Inc., a little-known California genetic engineering company, became the overnight darling of Wall Street, raising over $38 million in its initial public stock offering. Lacking marketed products or substantial profit, the firm nonetheless saw its share price escalate from $35 to $89 in the first few minutes of trading, at that point the largest gain in stock market history. Coming at a time of economic recession and declining technological competitiveness in the United States, the event provoked banner headlines and ignited a period of speculative frenzy over biotechnology as a revolutionary means for creating new and better kinds of pharmaceuticals, untold profit, and a possible solution to national economic malaise.

 

Drawing from an unparalleled collection of interviews with early biotech players, Sally Smith Hughes offers the first book-length history of this pioneering company, depicting Genentech’s improbable creation, precarious youth, and ascent to immense prosperity. Hughes provides intimate portraits of the people significant to Genentech’s science and business, including cofounders Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson, and in doing so sheds new light on how personality affects the growth of science. By placing Genentech’s founders, followers, opponents, victims, and beneficiaries in context, Hughes also demonstrates how science interacts with commercial and legal interests and university research, and with government regulation, venture capital, and commercial profits.

 

Integrating the scientific, the corporate, the contextual, and the personal, Genentech tells the story of biotechnology as it is not often told, as a risky and improbable entrepreneurial venture that had to overcome a number of powerful forces working against it.  

 

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #233603 in Books
• Published on: 2011-10-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .75" h x 6.34" w x 9.32" l, 1.03 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 232 pages

Real-time PCR (Advanced Methods)

Real-time PCR (Advanced Methods)
by M Tevfik Dorak
(2)

Buy new: $84.00 $69.67
50 used & new from $55.72

(Visit the Most Gifted in Biotechnology list for authoritative information on this product's current rank.)

Review & Description

With a variety of detection chemistries, an increasing number of platforms, multiple choices for analytical methods and the jargon emerging along with these developments, real-time PCR is facing the risk of becoming an intimidating method, especially for beginners. Real-time PCR provides the basics, explains how they are exploited to run a real-time PCR assay, how the assays are run and where these assays are informative in real life. It addresses the most practical aspects of the techniques with the emphasis on 'how to do it in the laboratory'. Keeping with the spirit of the Advanced Methods Series, most chapters provide an experimental protocol as an example of a specific assay.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #332580 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .78" h x 6.82" w x 9.62" l, 1.40 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 333 pages

Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life

Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life
by Marcus Wohlsen
(9)

Buy new: $25.95 $10.26
5 used & new from $9.82

(Visit the Best Sellers in Biotechnology list for authoritative information on this product's current rank.)

Review & Description

Bill Gates recently told Wired that if he were a teenager today, he would be hacking biology. "If you want to change the world in some big way," he says, "that's where you should start-biological molecules."

The most disruptive force on the planet resides in DNA. Biotech companies and academic researchers are just beginning to unlock the potential of piecing together life from scratch. Champions of synthetic biology believe that turning genetic code into Lego-like blocks to build never-before-seen organisms could solve the thorniest challenges in medicine, energy, and environmental protection. But as the hackers who cracked open the potential of the personal computer and the Internet proved, the most revolutionary discoveries often emerge from out-of-the-way places, forged by brilliant outsiders with few resources besides boundless energy and great ideas.

In Biopunk, Marcus Wohlsen chronicles a growing community of DIY scientists working outside the walls of corporations and universities who are committed to democratizing DNA the way the Internet did information. The "biohacking" movement, now in its early, heady days, aims to unleash an outbreak of genetically modified innovation by making the tools and techniques of biotechnology accessible to everyone. Borrowing their idealism from the worlds of open-source software, artisinal food, Internet startups, and the Peace Corps, biopunks are devoted advocates for open-sourcing the basic code of life. They believe in the power of individuals with access to DNA to solve the world's biggest problems.

You'll meet a new breed of hackers who aren't afraid to get their hands wet, from entrepreneurs who aim to bring DNA-based medical tools to the poorest of the poor to a curious tinkerer who believes a tub of yogurt and a jellyfish gene could protect the world's food supply. These biohackers include:

- A duo who started a cancer drug company in their kitchen
- A team who built an open-source DNA copy machine
- A woman who developed a genetic test in her apartment for a deadly disease that had stricken her family

Along with the potential of citizen science to bring about disruptive change, Wohlsen explores the risks of DIY bioterrorism, the possibility of genetic engineering experiments gone awry, and whether the ability to design life from scratch on a laptop might come sooner than we think.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28849 in Books
• Published on: 2011-04-14
• Released on: 2011-04-14
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages