[IEEE-bhpjobs] Wednesday, April 20, 2005, 3:00pm 130 North Bldg Research Drive

[Walter Heger]

Seminar Series
Wednesday, April 20, 2005, 3:00pm
(130 North Bldg – Research Drive)

Drew Endy, PhD
Assistant Professor of Biological Engineering, MIT

"Building Biological Systems"

A combination of technologies is enabling the cheap and automatic
fabrication of long fragments of synthetic DNA.  Increasingly, if we
can
specify the information encoding a genetic system then we can construct
a
physical instance. As a result, two constraints that impact the design
of
natural genetic systems are removed. First, engineered genetic systems
do
not need to descend directly from pre-existing systems. Second, the
designs of engineered genetic systems do not need to be able to change
or
persist across evolutionary timescales. Here, I will discuss (i) our
redesign of the genome of a natural biological system, bacteriophage
T7,
and efforts to construct and test the new genome, (ii) a proposed
framework for designing many-component integrated genetic systems,
(iii)
work that needs doing in support of engineering biology, and (iv)
possible
consequences of success with respect to current and future biological
risks.

Reception outside Room 118 North Bldg.


Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy

Center for Bioinformatics & Computational Biology

Seminar Series

Wednesday, April 20, 2005, 3:00pm

(130 Nrth Bldg – Research Drive) o

Drew Endy, PhD

Assistant Professor of Biological Engineering, MIT

"Building Biological Systems"

A combination of technologies is enabling the cheap and automatic
fabrication of long fragments of synthetic DNA. Increasingly, if we can
specify the information encoding a genetic system then we can construct a
physical instance. As a result, two constraints that impact the design of
natural genetic systems are removed. First, engineered genetic systems do
not need to descend directly from pre-existing systems. Second, the designs
of engineered genetic systems do not need to be able to change or persist
across evolutionary timescales. Here, I will discuss (i) our redesign of the
genome of a natural biological system, bacteriophage T7, and efforts to
construct and test the new genome, (ii) a proposed framework for designing
many-component integrated genetic systems, (iii) work that needs doing in
support of engineering biology, and (iv) possible consequences of success
with respect to current and future biological risks.

Reception outside Room 118 North Bldg.