The start of startups

Cetus, the world’s first biotechnology company, is founded by Donald Glaser, a Berkeley professor and 1960 Nobel Prize winner in physics who later took up the study of molecular biology.

Cetus begins life seeking automated methods to select for industrial microorganisms. Its biggest successes, however, are in pharmaceutical R&D and DNA diagnostics, including creation of the technique of polymerase chain reaction DNA amplification.

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