Nobel Laureate Says Biotech Research is the Future

Nobel laureate Richard J Roberts says that if anybody wants to win the most coveted award on Earth, then biotechnology is the field to conduct research. Roberts was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1993 for discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing.

Mr Roberts, who is in India for the 9th Bangalore Bio 2009 conference said recession was the right time to go into biotech as there were no competitors in this field. "We still know very little about biology and the mechanisms of life. So this provides us with a huge opportunity to focus on areas that humanity needs most. Far from being a negative factor, the recession has provided us with an opportunity to plan and consolidate better," Roberts said.

He added that genetically-modified food, bio-energy, stem cell research, synthetic biology and personalised medicine were the main areas of growth in this segment. "Soon, there will be an explosion of knowledge and products in this field," he concluded, saying that stem cell research was a particularly fertile field.



Source-Medindia
RAS