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Presents the findings of a study on the uses and limitations of microcosms for prerelease risk assessment of genetically engineered soilborne bacteria. Note on the genetic modification of microorganisms for the creation of new products; Importance of genetically engineered microorganisms.

Describes the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment's (OTA) approach to evaluating proposals for releasing genetically engineered microorganisms (GEM) into the environment. Description of the international movement toward formulating good developmental practices stressing basic concepts and well-recognized scientific principles to evaluate proposals for releasing GEM; Complaints of critics such as Democratic Rep. James Scheuer of New York that the review of deliberate release experiments is too cumbersome and uneven a process; Review of field test proposals for genetically modified plants by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. INSET: Rabies vaccine: a strange test case in Argentina..

Discusses how the rapid development of industrial genetic engineering and the barriers it faces are boosting the study of microbial ecology. Example of the use of yeast in food products in a discussion of how people have introduced microbes into new environments; Inoculation of fields by farmers with laboratory-bred strains of nitrogen-fixing rhizobium, which might act as a role model for evaluating organisms genetically engineered for agriculture; Way that scientists can follow the growth and spread of bacterial populations and collect data on species' competitiveness among similar bacteria; Concern that genetically engineered microbes may be harmful to animals.

The article focuses on issues related to release of genetically engineered organisms in the environment. In June 1983 the U.S. National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) approved the first three requests. The first one was a test by UC Berkeley researcher Steven Lindow of a genetically altered version of the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae that would retard frost formation on potato plants. A coalition of public interest groups including the Foundation on Economic Trends, Environmental Action Inc., Environmental Task Force Inc., and the Humane Society of the United States sued NIH for approving all three releases and stopped Lindow's field research with the legal basis that NIH failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act.

Presents briefs related to biology and the environment as of November 1987. Controversy surrounding the release of genetically engineered microorganisms to the environment; How leatherback turtles regulate their body temperature; Findings of immunological tolerance of foreign tissue in mice that have been injected with antibodies; Others.