Methylotrophy and Biotechnology

This volume aims to cover the fundamental and industrial/applied aspects of methylotrophic micro-organisms. In the first part, the authors aim to give a sufficiently detailed overview of the fundamental biochemistry and physiology of methylotrophic organisms to provide a good understanding of this group of organisms. In particular it tries to summarize more recent developments.;The second part is a study of the practical applications of these bacterias and yeasts. It attempts to be sufficiently fundamental to enable the "pure" scientist, whatever his background and lack of experience in the commercial aspects of biotechnology, to understand the problems of bridging the gap between biological fundamentals and laboratory-scale operations on the one hand and successful commercial applications on a much larger scale on the other.;The work is intended to be of value to several categories of reader: undergraduate and postgraduate students with little knowledge of methylotrophy or biotechnology who wish to understand the full implications of their fundamental observations of the metabolism of micro-organisms that utilize single carbon compounds; students with an understanding of methylotrophy who wish to gain an insight into the current commercial applications of methylotrophs and who, it is hoped, will be stimulated to generate new ideas for further applications; and biotechnologists with a chemical or engineering background who wish to gain background information on the potential of methylotrophic micro-organisms.