The field of biotechnology has revolutionized the concepts in agriculture, food, industrial feed stocks and health care in the past three decades. It has furnished new tools and techniques to enhance the agricultural productivity, raise value-added products and health care systems and has ensured better environments. Over the years it has exploited biological systems at all levels of complexity or organisations for improving the life of common man. Scientific breakthroughs in gene expression, protein engineering, and drug designing, animal health care, industrial chemistry, preservation of biodiversity and cell fusion are being increasingly translated into new products and services. Rapid advances in different areas of biotechnology have ushered tremendous changes in agriculture, medicine and cell biology.

The present book Current Topics in Biotechnology incorporates review articles on varied aspects of biotechnology. The volume contains 10 chapters written by experts in the disciplines, Dr Edison T Liu, Executive Director of the Genome Institute of Singapore has briefly discussed "What is next in biotechnology?" Dr. Weichang Yu and Dr. James A. Birchler have reviewed "Minichromosomes: The next generation technology for plant genetic engineering". Dr V S Hanur, Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Hesaraghatta, Bangalore has reviewed the pertinent information on Plant stem cells: Molecular biology and Biotechnology. Sonali Chadha discusses Cloning Vectors: the vehicles of genetic engineering.

Drs. Dapinder Bakshi and J K Arora (Add Director, Biotechnology, PSCST, Chandigarh) have made excellent attempt to present a succinct review on GENETICALLY MODIFIED CROPS IN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE.

Considering that cotton fiber biology is important for describing, defining and refining fundamental questions in the fields of cell and developmental biology, Prof C P Malik, Dr Bhavneet Kaur, Chitra Wadhwani and Aman Verma have discussed the Mechanism of cotton fiber development. Prof C P Malik, Aman Verma, Chitra Wadhwani and Bhavneet Kaur(Dr) have made indepth survey and reviewed the pertinent literature on Bt cotton and its commercial use. Prof C P Malik and his colleagues have compiled recent literature on the technique especially molecular biology of fruit ripening. The chapter on Prions: THE LETHAL PROTEINS by Chitra Wadhwani and C P Malik is aimed at looking at the prion diseases from a molecular point of view, taking into account the genetic as well as the transmissible and sporadic aspect of the disease. THE ROLE OF BIOTECHNOLOGY IN PROLONGING THE SHELF LIFE OF FRUITS. DRS S P Vyas and Amit K Goyal have done extremely fascinating job to review the available literature on PLANT DERIVED EDIBLE VACCINES.

The present volume is a must for all science libraries catering to the needs of postgraduate students and doctoral scholars: to the teachers and students engaged in teaching and research in biotechnology, Physiology and plant sciences, Agriculture, plant breeding, Animal breeding. The book will serve as an excellent reference source for advanced topics in Biotechnology.