The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is organising the Indo-US conference and workshop on synthetic and systems biology at JNU, New Delhi from November 9 to 12, 2014.

Synthetic biology is a forward engineering approach to make novel and well-behaved parts, devices and circuits. The ground-up construction of biological system calls for adequate part characterisation, assembly of parts into modules and modules into networks. Recent scientific developments have made it possible to install artificial genetic circuits as applets in-vivo, construct switches, cascades, stable oscillators, make genes from junk DNA, synthesise therapeutic molecules and biochemicals from microbes, use microbial factory for large scale manufacture and refinery, chemically synthesise non-natural DNA and so on.

It is the biology of systems, as against biology of parts. To understand systems as a function of group interaction of bio-molecules, one needs to use good data and good data modelling and analytical techniques to generate hypothesis leading more experiments and discoveries. In future, one is likely to see computational pathway modelling leading to development of virtual cells. This will have enormous impact on fundamental science and generate practical applications.

The four-day event will explore all this and much more. from India, K. Vijayraghavan, DBT; Sangram Bagh, SINP, Kolkata; Archana Chugh, IIT Delhi; Manish Gupta, DAIICT; Guhan Jayaraman, IIT Madras; Venkatesh Karenhalli, IIT Bombay; Arvind Lalli, ICT Mumbai; Dixita Limbachiya, DAIICT; KJ Mukherjee, JNU; Umesh P., University of Kerala; S. Ramaswamy, inStem, C-CAMP; Vikram Singh, CUHP; Pramod Wangikar, IIT Bombay;Shams Yazdani, ICGEB; Sudip Kundu, Calcutta University; Indira Ghosh, JNU; and Pawan K. Dhar, SNU will be participating in the conference.

From USA, Himadri Pakrasi, WUSTL; Parag Chitnis, USDA, NIFA; Susanne von Bodman, NSF; Costas Maranas, PSU; Tae Seok Moon, WUSTL; Aindrila Mukhopadhyay, LBNL; Vivek Mutalik, LBNL;Aparna Nagarajan, WUSTL; Brian Pfleger, UW- Madison; Sarah Richardson, LBNL; Howard Salis, PSU; Kamal Shukla, NSF; Yinjie Tang, WUSTL; Fuzhong Zhang, WUSTL; Huimin Zhao, UIUC; and Aseem Ansari, UWM will be participating in the four-day event.