The 33rd Steenbock Symposium returns in 2009, Thursday, July 30 to Sunday, August 2nd, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The theme of the 33rd Steenbock Symposium is: “Synthetic Genes to Synthetic Life.”

The symposium will start with a focus on the Nobel Prize winning Dr. Har Gobind Khorana’s pioneering work fusing chemistry and biology to crack the genetic code and synthesize genes. Then, the symposium will encompass the incredible advances in molecular biology, chemical biology, and biotechnology to the exciting developments in synthetic biology, stem cell biology, tissue engineering, biomaterials and molecular medicine.

Finally, the symposium will end with a focus on origins of life, synthetic genomes, creation of synthetic life forms, and the ethical issues that face the engineering of life forms. In so doing, we intend to highlight major insights into biological systems and how these guide current efforts to engineer them. We believe this symposium will be exciting, timely, and thought provoking.

More information will be available: www.biochem.wisc.edu/seminars/steenbock/