As part of the efforts to promote and encourage the area of Chemical Biology among the Spanish scientific community, the first Biennial Meeting of the Chemical Biology Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry is organized in Santiago de Compostela from 8 to 9 March. The aim of this meeting is to provide a forum for discussion among scientists interested in this fascinating field, and to promote the future development of this area.
Not many years ago, Cell Biology and Medicine were scientific areas far from Chemistry, which is the part of science devoted to study the molecules. Recent scientific advances have progressively allowed a more detailed knowledge of the molecular basis of many biological processes, and of the functional errors associated with different diseases. Therefore, the role of the Chemistry in Biology and Medicine is progressively growing. As a result, a new scientific discipline, “Chemical Biology”, has emerged. Chemical Biology could be defined as an interdisciplinary branch of science that encompasses the studies to understand and modulate biological processes using chemical tools. Spanish chemists have not wanted to be left out of this trend and recently, in March 2011, they created the Spanish Chemical Biology group of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ). The first President and treasurer of the group are José Luis Mascareñas and Concepción González Bello, who are professors of this University.
This first meeting of the group will be held from 8 to 9 March in Santiago de Compostela, and will feature four well-known international scientists as plenary lectures, Prof. Shankar Balasubraniam from the University of Cambridge (UK), Oliver Seitz from the Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany), Thomas Carell from the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (Germany) and Modesto Orozco from the University of Barcelona. Prof. Balasabrumanian has been the co-inventor of the widely used technology commercialized by Illumina Solexa to sequence the genome, which allows high quality readout of one billion bases per run with almost an error. Professors Carell and Seitz are international leaders in the nucleic acids and DNA field. They have developed artificial systems that allow them to study DNA damages that are responsible for very important diseases such cancer. Prof. Orozco is a specialist in the computer simulation of the biological systems.
Another three invited speakers and numerous researchers, who will present seventy communications, oral or posters, will also participate. Over 140 researchers will be attended the meeting, which is organized by four professors from the Centro de Investigacións Biolóxicas e Materiais Moleculares (CIQUS, www.usc.es/ciqus/), José Luis Mascareñas, Concepción González Bello, Miguel Vázquez and Eugenio Vázquez.
The opening ceremony will take place on Thursday 8 March at 3 pm in the Aula Magna of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Santiago de Compostela (Campus Vida). The inauguration will be chair by the Vice-rector for Research and Innovation of the University of Santiago de Compostela, Francisco González García and will also have the President of the RSEQ, Jesús Jiménez Barbero.
This meeting is funded by the former Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICIIN), the Chemical Biology Group of the RSEQ and the RSEQ and is sponsored by various companies (Galchimia, Lilly, Cienytech, Fischer Scientifia and Praxair).
Contact:
José Luis Mascareñas (Tel. 669 635 703; e-mail: joseluis.mascarenas [at] usc.es) o Concepción González Bello (Tel. 619 310 153; e-mail: concepcion.gonzalez.bello [at] usc.es).
For more information: www.usc.es/qbrseq/
Prof. Shankar Balasubramanian
http://www-shankar.ch.cam.ac.uk/
Prof. Thomas Carell
http://www.carellgroup.de/
Prof. Oliver Seitz
http://www.chemie.hu-berlin.de/seitz/index_e.htm
Prof. Modesto Orozco
http://mmb.pcb.ub.es/grup.htm