Foreword

Biotechnology has been one of the most important subjects that has been shaping the later half of the last century and will continue to flourish and expand to newer frontiers in the present century. More importantly, biotechnology will be drawing from parallel developments in other related areas such as Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Microbiology, Genetics, Bioinformatics, Nanotechnology, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Biophysics to mention only a few. The realms of biotechnology have been extended from prokaryotic to eukaryotic organisms, from the obscure bacteria and virus to higher plants and animals; from the unicellular algae to complex multicellular mammalian tissues. It has been turned into a high science topic to our everyday vocabulary over a short period of time.

It is quite remarkable to note how different branches of biotechnology have emerged from few disciplinary micro niches to well defined dynamic research areas that has and will have both substantial academic and industrial impact in the not so distant future. Several positive and negative attributes has been associated with biotechnology from gene delivery technologies to development of transgenic microbes, animals and crops; from molecular pharming to phytoremediation and from cancer and stem cell research to newly emerging epigenetics. The field has broad and wide applications and with every new developments reported in leading peer-reviewed journals across the globe the opportunities only become wider and the hopes brighter.

The editors have done an excellent job of bringing out a timely peer-reviewed volume under the banner "Advances in Biotechnology" with contributors spread across four different continents. It is quite impressive to note that the editors have tried to capture such a wide and dynamic topic in a series of captivating articles highlighting on different forms of life, both existing and newly emerging technologies in the field, protocols, methodologies and approaches, advantages, new school of thoughts from around the world, potential future prospects as also negative criticism that is associated with some frontier development of biotechnological research. The attractive illustrations for presenting complex theoretical and experimental details and overall production design are sure to win the heart of enthusiastic readers. The simplicity of the language and presentation style appealed to me a lot.

This volume is also unique as this an electronic book (e-book) moving away from the traditional concept of hard or soft cover book that we are all so used to. To my mind this new approach will make the volume more easily accessible to wider sections of readers and will be appreciated by even those who do not have access to big resource rich libraries. In addition, my sincere thoughts are that being easily available the current volume would have much higher citation rates compared to traditional hard copy versions. In this new century technology will govern our life and such approaches are welcome to reach wider audiences in future. The present volume will be beneficial to students and researchers in different fields of biotechnology and related areas.

It is a great pleasure on my part to pen a foreword for this prestigious, multi-authored, peer-reviewed, international publication on a topic that is very close to my heart. I wish the editors great success and will love to see a regular series culminating from this humble beginning. I also extend my sincere thanks to all the contributors for their excellent effort in making this volume a success.