The Biologist's Imagination

William Hoffman has been a writer and editor in the University of Minnesota Medical School for more than three decades. He has worked closely with faculty in genetics and bioengineering and with the medical technology and bioscience industries. He also interacts with the research and policy communities around the world through the web-based global bioscience maps he created to show how competition in science, technology and business is affecting bioethics, economic development and growth.Leo T. Furcht, MD is Allen-Pardee Professor of Cancer Research and Head of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology in the University of Minnesota Medical School. He is past president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), a biomedical research advocacy organization with more than 80,000 members and 27 constituent societies. He holds numerous patents on peptides, biocompatible materials, and multipotent adult stem cells.

• Introduction ; Chapter 1: Ideas, progress, wealth, and the biological revolution ; Chapter 2: Drugs, biomolecules, brains, and the shifting currents of innovation ; Chapter 3: Regional bioinnovation: Reaping the harvest of the local ; and the global ; Chapter 4: Mendel's journey from peas to petabytes ; Chapter 5: Toning up universities for regional growth ; Chapter 6: Splicing and dicing: Property, information, and the DNA of innovation ; Chapter 7: Looking ahead as an industry evolves ; Conclusion ; Chapter endnotes ; Selected bibliography ; Acknowledgements ; Index

This exceptionally well researched and engagingly presented account of the growth of biotechnology in medicine, agriculture, manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries is a veritable tour de force.