Panta rei: everything is changing!

✍ Scribed by Andreas Kiener

• Book ID: 104361696
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 36 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0958-1669
• DOI: 10.1016/s0958-1669(02)00384-1

✦ Synopsis

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus lived from 536 to 470 BC. He captured his philosophy in just two words: panta rei, literally everything flows or everything is changing. The philosopher argued that everything is constantly changing, from the smallest grain of sand to the stars in the sky. Only change itself is real, every object ultimately is a figment of people's imagination.

Let us now take a huge jump into biocatalysis and start thinking about the constant changes that have occurred here. Early this century, as a piece of grain, it started with the formation and analysis of natural products by fermentation (let us forget about 'biological' alcohol formation from centuries ago) mainly by chemists, and then constantly moved through space reaching from star to star by major scientific achievements. But, where are we now? And how do we move from the current star to the next one?

Let us look at some of the possibilities we have to move forward in space. The papers published in this Chemical Biotechnology section of Current Opinion in Biotechnology present a summary of the current status of bioorganic chemistry and the moves it is making into the biology arena.