REVISED

I've worked with a scientist for ten years in chemical engineering and we published papers about how to have increase the ethanol used in gasoline. It's not just ethanol but also biofuels like biofuels. Yeast is used in many other fermentations of course for wine and beer. In Japan I was told that every bit of yeast that they get from a brewery is then used commercially for something else, such as taste enhancers. About 1% of the yeast residue that they could not figure out a use for, GTP and was discovered to taste like bonito, dried bonito, the fish taste. The Japanese are very interested in taste enhancers, and found a use for the last 1% of the yeast they had left over.

Gerald Fink, geneticist, changed the field of molecular yeast biology. He is a professor of genetics at MIT, a founding member of both the Whitehead Institute and the American Cancer Society and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1981). After receiving his Ph.D. from Yale University, he was a part of the Cornell faculty for fifteen years and also served as president of the Genetics Society of America.

In 1976, Fink’s lab succeeded in performing yeast transformation. Gerald Fink currently researches baker's yeast and explores critical pathways in cell growth and metabolism; applications include cancer research and the development of new anti-fungal drugs. He also directs a plant research group heralded for new insights into root growth and salt metabolism.

Although Fink grew up on Long Island, it was not until he attended the 1966 Symposium that he visited Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1970, he began teaching the CSHL course on yeast molecular biology and continued doing so for 17 years. In 1999, he received the first honorary doctorate awarded by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.