Abstract: Synthetic biology is bringing together engineers,
physicists and biologists to model, design and 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.
Biography: 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. He is one of the founders of the field of
synthetic biology, and his research group is currently focused on using
synthetic biology to create next-generation diagnostics and therapeutics.
Professor Collins' patented technologies have been licensed by over 25 biotech,
pharma and medical devices companies, and he has helped to launch a number of
companies, including Synlogic and Sherlock Biosciences. He has received numerous awards and honors,
including a Rhodes Scholarship, a MacArthur "Genius" Award and the
Dickson Prize in Medicine, and he is an elected member of all three national
academies - the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of
Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine.