Explores the culture of biotechnology as it emerged at Cetus Corporation during the 1980s and focuses on its distinctive configuration of scientific, technical, social, economic, political, and legal elements, each of which had its own separate trajectory over the preceeding decades. Contains interviews with Kary Mullis, the maverick who received the Nobel Prize for "discovering" it, as well as a team of young scientists who chose to work in this high-risk industry