The molecular waltzes of life take place largely inside cells, and one simple definition of biotechnology is "the commercialization of cell biology." More generally, biotechnology is an umbrella term that covers various techniques for using the properties of living things to make products or provide services. The term was first used before the 20th century for such traditional activities as making dairy products, bread, or wine, but none of these would be considered biotechnology in the modern sense. Nor would genetic alteration through selective breeding, or plant cloning by grafting, or the use of microbial products in fermenting. What's new about modern biotechnology is not the principle of using various organisms but the techniques for doing so. These techniques, applied mainly to cells or molecules, make it possible to take advantage of biological processes in very precise ways. Genetic engineering, for example, allows us for the first time to transfer the properties of a single gene from one organism to another. Before I explain these modern techniques in the next chapter, I want to outline some of the history that led to their development.

The thing about biotechnology that surprises most people is that it has produced so many applications so rapidly. Its very pace of development leaves an uneasy feeling of having missed something along the way, as if the whole biotechnology business fell out of the sky fully formed while we were out walking the dog.

It's one thing to be told that scientists can do this or that, another to actually understand how such things came about, to realize how we know what we know. The skills of biotechnology, like all human knowledge, only