17Dec
Nature Biotechnology featured iGEM and synthetic biology in their most recent issue. There were many articles published in that issue, including opinion pieces on the cost of DNA synthesis, patenting issues, ethics and public policy, and much, much more. This current issue is definitely worth a look to get a feel for the state of synthetic biology now, and I’d strongly recommend those of us who are interested in synthetic biology to take a look at it!
Some points of interest include:
Enjoy!
02Dec
The next Journal Club Meeting is this Wednesday (2nd December 2009), 4:30PM. It will be held in room 101 at the Michael Smith Laboratories (next to the bookstore). The “Journal Club” series bring people together to discuss cutting-edge scientific research in Synthetic Biology. This is also the place where next year’s project will be formed and evaluated. For this week, Shing Hei Zhan will be providing snacks, and Charles will be presenting a talk titled “BioBytes: The Next Generation”, which is a talk on the 2009 University of Alberta’s iGEM Team Project, which also won the “Best Foundational Advance” award, ahead of team Heidelberg (they were the runners-up in the entire competition), who also competed in the same category.
Charles was one of the founding team members of the 2009 iGEM Team. He has a wealth of scientific education behind him, having graduated with two Bachelors degrees in Computer Science and in Biotechnology. He also works as a Bioinformatician at the Hallam Lab in the Life Sciences Centre, and was recently named as one of the authors in a paper published in Science. (Just so you know, Science is on of the biggest journals to publish in!)
Essential information:
* Date: 2 December 2009
* Time: 4:30PM to 5:30PM
* Venue: MSL101
* Speaker: Charles Howes
* Talk Title: BioBytes: The Next Generation
* Snacks: Shing Hei Zhan
Filed under: club matters
