Biotechnology & Bioengineering

Despite the fact that Chinese Hamster Ovary cells, aka CHOs, are the most commonly used mammalian cell factory used for production of biopharmaceutics, the genomic sequence was only recently published. This has triggered an avalanche in systems biotechnology research for Chinese Hamster Ovary cells, resulting in a dedicated webpage that provides easy access to the genomic sequence and tools for researchers to use this information. www.CHOgenome.org is hosted by the University of Delaware and chaired by Professors Mike Betenbaugh (Johns Hopkins University), Kelvin Lee (University of Delaware) and Nicole Borth (BOKU-DBT). To high-light the surge in genomic research enabled by the availability of the sequence information, Biotechnology and Bioengineering has dedicated its latest issue to this topic with the three above as guest editors. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291097-0290/homepage/cho_cell_genomics_special_section.htm Biotop student Jadhav Vaibhav designed the cover and also contributed an article. Three out of the nine papers published in this special issue are authored or co-authored by BOKU-DBT researchers, demonstrating their strong involvement in this hot research area.