Building Life from the Bottom Up. Science, Technology, and Medicine (Camille & Henry Dreyfus Lecture)

Prof. Dr. Steven Benner (Foundation for Applied Molecuar Evolution, Alachua, Florida, USA)

Synthetic biology seeks to re-create the phenomena known as„life“, but under the controlled guidance of synthetic chemists who exploit their understanding of physical organic mechanisms as well as molecular structure. This talk will review progress meeting the grand challenge of recreating life from the bottom up, with a focus of creating synthetic platforms that reproduce the archetypal features of living systems: reproduction, adaptation, and evolution. Special emphasis will be placed on how laboratory in vitro evolution using synthetic evolvable genetic systems has solved problems in medicine, especially in diagnostics, and is offering new ways to generate drugs for every disease.

Camille & Henry Dreyfus Lectureship
In memory of the Dreyfus brothers, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Inc. has established the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Lectureship at the University of Basel. The annual Lectureship brings a leading chemist from the United States to the Basel campus to deliver a series of talks, and to meet with faculty and students in order to enhance the relationship between Swiss and U.S. science.

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