EDITORIAL - Invitation to participate in the World Congress "Biotechnology 2000" to be held at Berlin, Germany

It is generally agreed that the newly started century will be the century of Biotechnology. During the last decades, all the molecular techniques necessary to understand the structure and function of living cells were established and proven to be extremely successful. It is now possible to sequence the genomes of pro- and eukaryotic organisms. Using bioinformatics, the location of genes can be identified and in many cases their function can be predicted. At the same time, powerful methods were established to analyse proteins and to understand their roles in metabolic and regulatory networks. Finally, genetic engineering can be used to modify the genetic capacity of living cells, leading to interesting applications in medicine, agriculture and industry. There is really a tremendous amount of new knowledge on the molecular level of life sciences