Synthetic Biology from Molecules Up: Applications to the Needs of Systems BiologistsDr. Steve Benner, Director of the Foundation for Applied Molecular EvolutionDr. Benner is a pioneer in synthetic biology, chemical genetics, evolutionary bioinformatics, and paleomolecular genetics. He is leading scientists at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (FfAME) in a variety of multidisciplinary research in fields as diverse as chemistry, informatics, biology, geology, and astronomy to place biological chemistry within its larger "systems" context, from the cell to the organism, and from there to the ecosystem and the planet. Emerging from their work are new tools for systems biology and personalized medicine, as well as answers to some "big" questions: Where did we come from? What is our future? Are we alone? Team FfAME has recently entered the competition for the $10 million dollar Archon X PRIZE for Genomics; the objective is to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days. Please refer to the Seminar Series page on OpenWetWare for more information
The Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC) is a multi-institution research effort to lay the foundation for synthetic biology, which aims to build biological components and assemble them into integrated systems to accomplish specific tasks. Watch SynBERC events, like talks in the Seminar Series, online here! Because of the collaborative and distributed nature of the consortium, many events are both streamed for live teleconferencing and digitally archived online (here at blip.tv) for later viewing. This includes talks in Seminar Series, which features seminar-type presentations given by luminaries in the field on topics relating to synthetic biology, and occassionally more informal lunchtime roundtable discussions. Please visit the Seminar Series page on OpenWetWare for the current schedule.
