Science for All Seasons 2016

Science for All Seasons gives you a chance to explore hot topics in genomics with leading experts from the Broad Institute. Find out what key advances, new technologies, and the latest findings mean for you in this free and open lecture series.
 

2016 Lectures

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Tuesday, September 27, 6-7:00pm
Harnessing Evolution to Solve Problems in Biotechnology and Therapeutics Science
David Liu

Biological evolution has solved many challenging molecular problems with breathtaking effectiveness. Researchers have begun to harness the remarkable power of evolution to address problems of their own choosing, rather than of nature’s choosing. In this lecture, Liu will describe the development and first applications of phage­assisted continuous evolution (PACE), a method that enables proteins to evolve continuously in the laboratory for the first time, accelerating the speed of laboratory evolution ~100­fold. The Liu group has used PACE to rapidly evolve a wide variety of proteins with the potential to serve as novel therapeutic agents, as well as to study the reproducibility and path dependence of evolution over thousands of generations in a practical time frame. Liu will also describe a recent effort to use PACE to address a major problem facing worldwide agricultural productivity: the rise of insects resistant to a widely used protein insecticide.

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Wednesday, May 18, 6-7:00pm
Medical Interpretation of Human Genomes
Heidi Rehm

With the plummeting cost of sequencing, genetic data is becoming increasingly available for use in the diagnosis, treatment and prediction of disease. Ensuring the successful use of genomics in medicine will require the community to come together to share data and contribute to the collective curation of that data for clinical and research use. This talk will focus on national and international efforts to develop improved standards and resources to support genomic medicine.

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[ Video ]

 

Wednesday, March 30, 6-7:00pm
Synthetic Biology: Redesigning Life
Jim Collins

Description: Synthetic biology is bringing together engineers, physicists, and biologists to construct biological circuits out of proteins, genes, and other bits of DNA, and to use these circuits to rewire and reprogram organisms. These re-engineered organisms are going to change our lives in the coming years, leading to cheaper drugs, rapid diagnostic tests, and synthetic probiotics to treat infections and a range of complex diseases. In this talk, we highlight recent efforts to create synthetic gene networks and programmable cells and discuss a variety of synthetic biology applications in biotechnology and biomedicine.

Jim Collins
Jim Collins is the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT, as well as a member of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences & Technology faculty. He is also a core founding faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and an Institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

His research group works in synthetic biology and systems biology, with a particular focus on using network biology approaches to study antibiotic action, bacterial defense mechanisms, and the emergence of resistance. Collins's patented technologies have been licensed by over 25 biotech, pharmaceutical, and medical device companies, and he has helped to launch a number of companies, including Sample6 Technologies, Synlogic, and EnBiotix.

He has received numerous awards and honors, including a Rhodes Scholarship, a MacArthur "Genius" Award, an NIH Director's Pioneer Award, and several teaching awards. Collins is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine,as well as the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors.
 

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