Conference: 2017 Plant Metabolic Engineering Gordon Research Conference and Gordon Research Seminar; July 8-14, 2017; Waterville Valley Conference Center, New Hampshire

Gordon Research Conferences, East Greenwich RI

Investigators

Abstract

The 2017 Metabolic Engineering Gordon Research Conference and Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) series to be held in July 2017 at Waterville Valley Conference Center in New Hampshire. It is seventh in a series of conferences that attract world-leaders in the field of Metabolic Engineering. A major aim of this conference is to bring together practitioners from academia and industry to develop a community of cross-disciplinary experts who are poised to translate innovative concepts into tangible progress. This will be necessary to realize the much anticipated 20th century bioeconomic enterprise. The educational aspect of this Gordon Conference is to expose students and junior researchers to the leaders in the various fields, and to showcase the power of cross-disciplinary research in the area of metabolic engineering. These individuals will have a chance also to receive valuable feedback from the leading academics and industrialists, which may have major impacts on their future career paths. The conference is organized by a well balanced demographic of organizers, invited speakers, students and junior- and mid-career academics and professionals. Research in plant metabolism has advanced rapidly since the advent of molecular biology, and has accelerated with the arrival of the omics/big data era. However, It has become clear that full potential of a global bioeconomy based on green production platforms for feedstocks and fuels, drugs, and food, requires innovations derived from interdisciplinary research. The emerging field of Synthetic Biology has played a significant role in creating a multifaceted engineering platform for advancing plant metabolic engineering. This Gordon Research Conference (GRC) will bring together leaders from plant and microbial engineering, synthetic biology, and computational biochemistry, as well as scientists from industry and funding agencies. The conference seeks to 1) highlight how synthetic biology can repurpose metabolism; 2) present cutting-edge engineering and discovery research from the biobased economy sectors; 3) explore how plants could be refactored to serve as metabolic production "chassis organisms.