Jack W. Szostak, professor at Harvard University and Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine 2009, inaugurates the Master of Integrative Synthetic Biology MISB (UIMP-CSIC) with the conference “The Origin of Cellular Life”. It will be held online next Thursday, October 7, 2021, at 4:00 p.m. CET and can be followed through the CSIC YouTube channel. W. Szostak is Professor of Chemistry, Chemical Biology, and Genetics at Harvard University, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and the Alexander Rich Distinguished Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider. The award recognized the study of the role of telomeres and telomerase in preventing the degradation of chromosomes, a discovery that revolutionized cellular aging research.

Current research in the Szostak laboratory focuses on the origin and early evolution of life, as well as the synthesis in the laboratory of simple systems that imitate cells.  Szostak has been a pioneer in the study of the experimental evolution of catalytic RNAs, in search of an RNA that can copy itself. Furthermore, he has made very notable contributions in the development of protocellular systems in the test tube through a systems chemistry strategy in which the heterogeneity of the components has a central role.

Professor Szostak's conference “The Origin of Cellular Life” inaugurates the first edition of the Master of Integrative Synthetic Biology MISB, an initiative of the CSIC and the Menéndez Pelayo International University UIMP. The MISB is the first graduate school on synthetic biology in Spain. It is a two-year master's degree (120 ECTS) whose objective is to provide students (coming from degrees in life sciences, physical-chemical sciences, technology and engineering) with an integrated training, research and innovation program on synthetic biology in an advanced scientific environment.

The MISB is a collective higher education action of the main CSIC centers on integrative synthetic biology: the CIB Margarita Salas (which coordinates the master's degree), the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB) and the Institute of Integrative Biology and Systems of Valencia (I2SysBio, mixed center Universitat de València-CSIC). In addition, it has the active participation of the biologically oriented research programs of the Rocasolano Physical Chemistry Institute (IQFR), and groups from other CSIC institutes, and several academic and research centers, national and foreign.

This event is also part of the activities of the CSIC CONEXION-VIDA network recently created on the basis of the CSIC Challenge “Origins, Co-Evolution, Diversity and Synthesis of Life”.

• More information about MISB