Abstract :
EUREKA MOMENTS usually come when you¿re doing something quite ordinary. Archimedes is said to have coined the expression after a brainwave in the bath. Thousands of years later, Kary Mullin was driving on California Highway 128 when he thought of a technique that was to revolutionise biotechnology and win him a Nobel Prize. His polymerase chain reaction tool is now used in everything from anthropology to synthetic biology. It¿s become the DNA equivalent of the Gutenberg press but now scientists are building the word processor for DNA. The story, which kicks off this biotech special issue, starts on p18.
