The Cell-Free Systems Conference will be held in Boston, Massachusetts on December 4-6, 2019. This conference is the first one to be held in the United States that addresses the achievements and challenges of cell-free platforms. Organized under the auspices of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), this international conference will bring together renowned experts, established researchers, young investigators, private sector scientists and engineers, and graduate students to assess the state of cell-free system technologies and to identify the challenges of abandoning traditional metabolic engineering.
Biological manufacturing is a common method to produce a vast array of chemicals used in the fields of energy, agriculture, and medicine. Historically, the pathways required to synthesize these chemicals have been genetically engineered into living cells such as yeast and bacteria. This approach is often hindered by other pathways already present in the cell, leading to low production yield and/or cell mortality. A cell-free systems approach aims to use synthetic biology to recreate the minimal transcriptional and translational machinery requisite to synthesize a desired chemical outside of a cell, therefore bypassing the regulatory feedback and suppression inherent within a complex living cell. More specifically, this conference will address important issues regarding the current state of cell-free systems in manufacturing, small molecule and therapeutic protein discovery, prototyping, diagnostics, and education. The proceedings of the conference will be peer-reviewed and disseminated to the public on AIChE's website.
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