ESF Research Conferences

ESF-EMBO Symposium

Synthetic Biology of Antibiotic Production

2-7 October 2011

Programme

This conference will focus on the advancement of synthetic biology, especially its application in the field of antibiotic production in filamentous fungi and actinomycete bacteria, including the implementation and modification of complex biosynthesis pathway modules in existing and new production hosts. Antibiotics production is regulated by complex networks and involves intricate multi-step biosynthetic machineries, as well as major reorganization of primary metabolic fluxes to redirect cellular metabolic resources towards their biosynthesis. The urgent need for new antibiotics caused by the accelerating emergence of multi-drug resistant pathogens worldwide has led to a strong interest in the research community for decidedly novel approaches, collectively referred to as Synthetic Biology.
Given the exquisitely modular nature of antibiotics biosynthesis in microorganisms and the advanced state of knowledge on it, the biotechnological manipulation of antibiotic production can be envisaged as one of the most promising first concrete industrial application domain of synthetic biology concepts. For this potential to be realized, it is critical to bring together the highly interdisciplinary community that has recently started investigating various aspects of the synthetic biology of antibiotic production. This community includes people from such diverse disciplines as metagenomics, combinatorial biochemistry, mathematical and computational modelling, cell engineering, molecular cell biology and biotechnology, and many more, both from academia and the biotechnology industry. The aim of this conference is to facilitate the indispensable mutual communication between researchers from these disciplines in a setting that stimulates the intense exchange of both fundamental knowledge and technical advancement. At the same time, it is a major opportunity to evoke broader awareness and interest in synthetic biology concepts in the microbiology community, which would not be reached by general synthetic biology conferences.

Conference format:

  • lectures by invited high level speakers
  • short talks by young & early stage researchers
  • poster sessions and open discussion periods
  • forward look panel discussion about future developments

Some prizes, from Nature Reviews Microbiology and EMBO Reports, will be attributed to the best posters of the conference. A prize, from Society for General Microbiology (SGM), will be attibuted to the best young researcher's talk of the conference.

   FINAL PROGRAMME (PDF - last updated 28 September)   

  • Invited talks are 30 minutes long

  • Short talks are 10 minutes long

  • Poster presentation includes a 1 minute oral presentation. Poster numbers are the ones indicated on the list of posters.

    There will be no talks other than those listed on the final programme.

    Recommended Poster size is A0 (vertical). Use letters and drawing that can be read from approximately 100cm distance. Posters can be fixed with cellotape and Blu-Tack.

List of invited speakers:

- Axel Brakhage, HKI, DE
Activation of fungal silent gene clusters
- Arnold Driessen, University of Groningen, NL
Secondary metabolite formation by Penicillium chrysogenum
- Michael Fischbach, UCSF, US
 A gene-to-molecule approach to the discovery and characterization of natural products
- Haruo Ikeda, Kitasato University, JP
Engineered streptomyces host for heterologous expression of secondary metabolism
- Kristala Jones Prather, MIT, US
Parts, devices, and chassis in support of metabolic engineering
- Nancy Keller, University of Wisconsin, US
Unlocking the fungal treasure chest
- Roy Kishony, Harvard University, US
The ecology of antibiotics
- Peter Leadlay, Cambridge University, UK
Defining modularity in polyketide synthase-containing pathways
- Rolf Mueller, Saarland University, DE
Comparative Secondary Metabolomics and Insights from the Structure of Hexylmalonyl-CoA Reductase
- Joern Piel, University of Bonn, DE
Biosynthetic pathways from animal-associated filamentous bacteria
- Markus Schmidt, Biofaction KG and IDC, AT
Biosafety and Public Dialogue in Synthetic Biology
- Luis Serrano, CRG, ES
A quantitative systems biology study on a model bacterium
- Christina Smolke, Stanford, US
Molecular controllers and their application in advancing metabolic pathway design in yeast
- Jörg Stelling, ETH, CH
Computational design of synthetic gene circuits
- Beatrix Suess, Frankfurt University, DE
Engineered riboswitches - an alternative means to control gene expression
- Chris Voigt, UCSF, US
Refactoring Prokaryotic Gene Clusters
- Wolfgang Wohlleben, Tübingen University, DE
Supply of building blocks for antibiotic biosynthesis