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Team:Bielefeld-Germany/Human Practices/CAS conference
From 2012.igem.org
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Revision as of 14:23, 24 September 2012
From 23th to 25th of July 2012 the [http://www.cas.uni-muenchen.de/veranstaltungen/tag_synth_bio_2012/index.html CAS Conference] took place, which was organized by the LMU Center for Advanced Studies in Munich. The conference was arranged in order to bring together scientists of different expertise to promote projects by an interdisciplinary discussion. Several notable speakers working on Synthetic Biology informed about their field of work, as for example Martin Fussenegger (ETH Zürich), Víctor de Lorenzo (CSIC Madrid) and Jay Keasling (University of California, Berkeley). Apart from this, two poster sessions were organized in which companies, working groups and also the iGEM teams could present their work. For the programme and a list of all speakers see [http://www.en.cas.uni-muenchen.de/events/tag_synth_bio_2012/program.pdf here].
Several members of our iGEM team participated at the conference. This offered us the possibility to extend our knownledge as well as to take part in interesting discussions on different fields of Synthetic Biology. Moreover we got the chance to discuss with experts about aims, achievements and problems of our project as well as to get to know some other iGEM teams and to inform us about their projects. We discussed with the experts especially about the active center and the wide substrate spectrum of our laccases, about the production of them in our two chosen expression systems as well as about advantages, risks and alternatives for the use in wastewater treatment plants.
Furthermore the philosopher Alfred Nordmann (TU Darmstadt) presented his point of view about Synthetic Biology during the CAS conference. To provoke some thoughts about Synthetic Biology, he chose the following main topics:
- Do we produce a shift in biology?
- Do we educate a new generation of scientists?
- Is it necessary to create something, to understand it? (Richard Feynman’s dictum)
- What happens to evolution by natural selection when notions of design are reintroduced?
- How mindful could we be of the “evolutionary fate” of designed organisms?
- Do we really understand the whole of our creation?
- How does it affect society?
- What influence does it have on our relation to and our respect for evolved biological nature?
- For example: Why should we worry about biodiversity when it could be designed?
Apart from us the iGEM teams from Bonn, TU Darmstadt, UCL London, TU München, LMU München, Marburg, Potsdam, Tübingen, Wageningen as well as the last winner team of High School division Heidelberg_LSL participated at the CAS conference.
After the official program all iGEM teams met in the evenings to have dinner, some drinks and a lot of fun….
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