工业革命极大地改变了人类社会文明发展的进程，使人们在享受工业文明创造的丰硕果实的同时，也饱尝了随之而来的环境污染和生态破坏的苦果；尤其是技术日新月异的今天，环境污染日益加剧，污染状态更加复杂，但人们对环境质量的要求却越来越高，传统的治理技术已难以满足越来越严格的环境标准。以分子生物学为基础的现代生物技术被认为是二十一世纪关系到国家命运的关键技术和创新产业的经济发展增长点之一，环境生物工程是现代生物技术和环境科学与工程紧密结合而形成的新型交叉学科，是一种经济效益与环境效益俱佳的、解决复杂环境污染问题的有效手段，是当代环境领域发展的主导方向之一。《分子生物学与环境生物工程》课程意在分子生物学理论和技术的基础上，扩展到其应用领域环境生物工程，注重实际案例中基本概念与思想的建立与分子生物学技术原理的分析，不仅使学生拓宽视野和形成综合性的知识结构，也表明环境生物工程作为环境领域的一个重要组成部分与生物技术相互依存、相互促进的关系，所以不但是环境科学与工程专业硕士研究生的学位必修课，而且可以作为非环境专业的普及课程。 本课程所肩负的使命是：体现系统性、普及性、专业性和趣味性四性统一，用36学时的时间高度概括地介绍环境生物工程的分子生物学基础以及在环境污染治理中的工程应用，内容涉及到环境生物工程的分子生物学理论基础，污染治理、生物修复、清洁生产、废物资源化、环境生物监测与安全性评价等，使学生了解环境生物工程的分子生物学理论基础、在环境相关各个领域中的技术应用，强调学生思考分子生物学与本专业、研究方向的结合点，有利于复合型人才的培养。

Industrial revolution has greatly changed the process of human being social civilization, which make us enjoy the fruit of industrial civilization but also bring us disastrous effects resulted from environmental pollution and ecological damage. Especially, environmental contamination is more serious and polluted condition is more complicated with the rapid development of technology. On the other hand, the demands of environmental quality are becoming higher and can’t be achieved by traditional technology of pollution control. Environmental biotechnology is new type cross subject, as prevailing trends of environmental technology, formed by combining modern biotechnology and environment science and engineering, which is effective measure to solve complicated environment problems with both profit of economy and environment. The curriculum titled《Molecular biology and Environmental engineering》intends to introduce fundamentals of molecular biology and application of technology in environment pollution control, also expressing the interdependence relationship between biotechnology and environment pollution control and accelerating the development each other as components of environmental fields. Therefore, 《Molecular biology and Environmental engineering》can be regards as not only basic curriculum for environment related majors but also as universalized curriculum for environment unrelated majors.The objectives of this curriculum: displaying the unity of systematic, popular, professional and interest, highly summarizing the basic concept, research fields, developing and trends, covering the basic theory of molecular biology, application of environmental biotechnology in pollution control, bioremediation, clean-up production, utilization of waste pollution monitoring and so on.