What Can't be Engineered Using Biology?

Tuesday, Jan 24, 2012

12:00pm – 1:00pm

Room 102, Haller Hall, Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Speaker:

• George Church
• Founding Core Faculty Member and Platform Leader for Biomaterials Evolution, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
• Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
•  

Abstract: Lowering the cost of technologies for reading and writing DNA (and biological systems) by a million-fold since 2004 means a 5-fold faster exponential than Moore's law.  This enables radical engineering of biofuels, chemicals, materials, foods multi-virus resistance, and atomically precise smart materials. It has also lead to the only fully open-access human Genome+Environment=Trait (GET)  data (& interpretation tools: Evidence.PersonalGenomes.org).   This impacts not only inherited genomes, but also day-to-day genomic variation --  immune, stem cell proliferation, microbes, allergens, vaccines, & subcellular-resolution epigenomics. The latest technologies include Fluorescent In Situ Sequencing (FISSEQ) and human genome engineering for personal functional diagnostics, personal synthetic tissues, microbiome & immunome transplantation therapies.
 

Contact information:

george.ye@gmail.com