New drugs from fungi, more economical production of hybrid crop plants and children's vaccines in potato slices will be discussed at the 13th annual Cornell Biotechnology Symposium, Tuesday, Oct. 14, at the Biotechnology Building on the Cornell campus.

The theme of the symposium is "Harvesting Useful Gene Products." Symposium lectures, from 9 a.m. to 12:05 p.m., and an afternoon poster session, from 2 to 5 p.m., are free and open to the public.

"This symposium brings together three of the leaders in the international effort to isolate useful genes and their products from plants and fungi, and in demonstrating their utility in agricultural production and in human health," said Milton Zaitlin, associate director of Cornell's New York State Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) in Biotechnology and a professor of plant pathology. "In the poster session, we will showcase some of the research projects that are supported by the Cornell CAT program in collaboration with industrial partners."

The scheduled symposium speakers are :

• William Timberlake, chief discovery officer at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, Mass., "Fungal Molecular Genetics and Pharmaceuticals: From New Bugs to Novel Drugs." Timberlake will discuss new molecular genetic tools for manipulating genomes of fungi to alter their secondary metabolism, as well as the possibility that complete secondary metabolism pathways from the majority of fungal species that cannot readily be cultured can be expressed in well-understood species.
• Robert Goldberg, professor of biology, University of California at Los Angeles, "Genetic Engineering for Male Fertility Control: From Test Tube to Hybrid Seed Production." In collaboration with Plant Genetic Systems of Ghent, Belgium, Goldberg's UCLA laboratory developed a novel approach to genetically engineering plants for male fertility control. The new system is expected to allow hybrid crops, such as corn, to be produced more economically and to permit hybrids in crop species, such as rice and oilseed rape, for which no hybrid systems exist.
• Hugh Mason, assistant research scientist, Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI), Cornell University, "Transgenic Plants for Vaccine Production: Studies Leading to Human Trials." Working in the Children's Vaccine Initiative at BTI and targeting viral and bacterial diarrheas and hepatitis B, Mason and his colleagues have shown that plant-produced antigens can stimulate the production of protective antibodies in mice. Human trials will begin soon to examine immune responses to one product from the Children's Vaccine Initiative, antigen-transformed potatoes.

More information on the symposium is available from the Cornell Center for Advanced Technology in Biotechnology at (607) 255-2300. The Cornell CAT is funded by the New York State Science and Technology Foundation, a consortium of industries and the federal government.