Novel Microbial Polymers: An Introductory Overview

While the fermentation products of micro-organisms were an essential ingredient for the success, indeed were the raison d’etre of symposia in the times of ancient Greece, and even today for the fringe activities of the scientific meetings we now choose to call symposia, our NATO Advanced Research Workshop is focused on other microbial products, the polymeric materials that many micro-organisms synthesize under appropriate conditions. That great pioneer of scientific method, Francis Bacon, had advocated investigation of the Kingdom of Nature in all its manifestations some fifty years before Anthony van Leeuwenhoek first described his “little animals” and now, over three centuries later, the activities of these tiny creatures have opened up a biotechnological revolution.