Wiley-Blackwell, the scientific, technical, medical and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc, and the Society for Applied Microbiology (SfAM) announced today publication of the first articles for Microbial Biotechnology.

"More than 90% of microbial diversity still remains to be discovered. It is this new biodiversity that will become the treasure chest of new and improved biotechnological developments and applications in the sectors of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, energy, mining, materials, agriculture, food, and environmental protection," said Professor Ken Timmis, Founding Editor of Microbial Biotechnology. "This new journal has been created to harness original research reporting advances belonging to the upper 25% in the field in any aspect of microbial applications."

Each issue of the journal will contain the highest-quality original research papers on topics such as green chemistry, bioenergy, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, metabolic design, diagnostics, systems analysis, and protein engineering. In addition, the journal will feature regular special issues edited by guest editors, genomic updates, and webalerts, a selection of web sites relevant to topics in microbial biotechnology.

All articles will be free of charge for the first year of publication.