Technique for inserting a foreign gene into
laboratory cultures of bacteria to generate
commercial biological products, such as
synthetic insulin, hepatitis-B vaccine, and
interferon. It was invented 1973 by the US
scientists Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer,
and patented in the USA 1984. See genetic
engineering. Cohen was working at Stanford
University and Boyer at the University of
California. Cohen shared a 1989 Nobel Prize
for Physiology or Medicine for his work in
cell growth.