SynBioNT Kick Off Workshop, Nottingham 13 March 2009

The main goal of this first meeting of the network was to start new vigorous interactions between the disciplines that contribute to Synthetic Biology by supporting a range of community building and technical activities. These activities are centred on the specific technical goal of achieving programmable interactions between (top-down) synthetic biological cells and (bottom-up) artificial chemical cells/protocells through rigorous computational design, modeling and verification. Furthermore, SynBioNT aims at encouraging a constructive dialog between scientists and social scientists as to try to understand ethical, legal and societal issues (ELSI) that might arise from this research.

Topics Discussed:

• Programmable interactions between biological and artificial cells.
• Computational and Mathematical modelling techniques in Synthetic Biology.
• (Bio)molecular toolkits based on natural and/or artificial components.
• Intelligent biomemetic materials.
• Application to cell, tissue and organ engineering.

Presentations:

• ''SynBioNT's Opening Talk'', Natalio Krasnogor, University of Nottingham, UK.
• ''Genetic Tools for Post-genomic Analysis and Engineering'', Esteban Martinez, National Center for Biotechnology, Spain.
• ''Semi-synthetic Minimal Cells'', Pasquale Stano, Biology Department, University of Roma Tre, Italy.
• ''Staphylocccal quorum sensing and enabling technologies for synthetic biology'' , Weng Chan, Centre for Biomolecular Sciences, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
• ''Structural and Computational Biology Programme'', Victor de la Torre, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, Spain.
• ''From natural to synthetic minimal cells'', Luis Delaye, Evolutionary Genetics Group, Institute Cavanilles of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, University of Valencia, Spain.