This proposal seeks support for the Xth International Conference on Metabolic Engineering (ME-X) to be held in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Metabolic Engineering Conference is a leading conference for sharing the state-of-the-art developments and achievements made in the field of metabolic engineering over the last two years. The theme of this year's conference is biological design and synthesis. The Conference is one of the first among several conference series related to biotechnology that started 20 years ago as an Engineering Foundation conference with focus on recombinant DNA technology. It has been the first conference with explicit focus on the application of recombinant DNA technology to the engineering of microorganisms for industrial processes. This metabolic engineering relies now on the tools commonly referred to as synthetic biology and systems biology. This conference has been instrumental in addressing issues contemporary to technological advancements, engineering research and to education.
The scope of this international conference is to bring together influential established researchers, young investigators, industrial researchers and practitioners, and graduate students to assess the contributions and future opportunities of metabolic engineering with focus on biological design and synthesis. The support will enable attendance by graduate students, postdocs, academic scientists and engineers and industrial researchers that will benefit from interactions with the international community of biotechnology researchers.
Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the Conference, the award by the Biotechnology, Biochemical, and Biomass Engineering Program of the CBET Division is co-funded by the Systems and Synthetic Biology Program of the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biology.
The Metabolic Engineering X Conference (ME-X) took place June 15-19, 2014 in Vancouver, Canada. It was the tenth in a series of biennial conferences. The 5 day event brought together 395 metabolic engineers in industry, academia and government from around the world. The field of metabolic engineering has rapidly emerged as an important area of research whose effects range from the environment to medicine; however, there are few forums that bring together biologists, chemists, and engineers to discuss ways in which their disciplines can collaborate to find novel solutions to fundamental and applied problems that are limiting the development of new technologies and therapies. In response to this need, we organized the Metabolic Engineering X Conference (ME-X). These meetings are held every two years and cover the breadth of Metabolic Engineering to promote, shape, and refine new directions in the field. The theme of 2014’s conference was biological design and synthesis. The Aims of this conference were to provide a venue: For scientific presentations from a diverse group of leading biology, chemistry and engineering researchers who cover the breadth of Metabolic Engineering. For interactions between academic and industry researchers, who bring different approaches and perspectives to the field. For active participation by Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers, who represent the future of metabolic engineering. For bringing scientists and engineers together to provide an atmosphere and venue to discuss their disciplines and approaches, and to motivate new research into barriers limiting the development of metabolic technologies. This grant directly impacted Aims 3 and 4, by providing partial support for graduate student/postdoctoral associate participants, and by providing a forum for the interactions between normally separated leading scientists and engineers to stimulate new ideas that could benefit economic, health and environmental related activities. The international, Metabolic Engineering conference series, is the premier event for the field. ME-X brought together leading experts, scientists, and students from industry, the government and academia to present and discuss cutting edge research. Presentations were typically provided by principal investigators from within and outside the core metabolic engineering community. To encourage interaction and further discussions, the entire meeting was held in a single-track format, with almost all meals taken together and with multiple social hours and poster sessions (typically presented by students, postdocs, or junior faculty/scientists). The theme of ME-X was "Biological Design and Synthesis". Advances in DNA synthesis and sequencing technologies have shifted focus in engineering biology applications increasingly towards the design of complex biological systems, which historically has been an area where metabolic engineering has provided international leadership. As such, ME-X provided a venue for discussing the most recent advances in synthesis, and how such advances are enabling entirely new approaches to metabolic engineering. One area of intense current interest was in increasing the length of synthetic constructs to allow not only for complete synthesis of entire pathways, but also for the synthesis of entire genomes (as demonstrated by Gibson, Venter, et al in 2010). As such technologies move forward it will be increasingly important that the metabolic engineering community rapidly adopts such advances. In turn, as Synthetic Biology continues to advance it will be similarly important that it utilizes the broad expertise and knowledge base of metabolic engineering for applications involving the production of fuels, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals among others involving the redirection of complex cellular chemistries. Towards this end, ME-X brought together four chairs/co-chairs that span both metabolic engineering (Gill, Wildt) and Synthetic Biology (Voigt, Peterson) who have developed a scientific program that encompasses modern synthetic biological strategies while maintaining key aspects of the historical conference program. Moreover, session chairs and speakers will be picked to represent both core and emerging areas within these fields.
