Public release date: 4-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Melanie Bernds mbernds@danforthcenter.org 314-587-1647 Donald Danforth Plant Science Center

ST. LOUIS, MO, September 4, 2012 The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center will be hosting its 14th annual Fall Symposium from Wednesday, September 26th Friday, September 28th, 2012. This year's symposium will feature lectures by influential experts from across the world who will present on a wide range of topics on cutting-edge science. This year's theme will focus on synthetic and systems level explorations in biology that are establishing fundamental emergent properties of complex biological systems.

"The annual symposium is an opportunity for a diverse group of scientists from private research, industry and universities to interact and learn from state-of-the-art talks on focused topics within biology," said Doug Allen, USDA Research Scientist, Assistant Member, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center who is organizing this year's event. "This is another example of how the Center works to enhance science in the St. Louis region."

Systems biology uses quantitative experimental approaches and computational modeling to understand how a multitude of components work together as a system to enable living systems to function. In addition, synthetic biology extends this understanding by redesigning and manipulating the capabilities of a biological system to achieve new and different goals. The Center's symposium will explore how systems and synthetic biology are complementary and facilitate the engineering of living systems with new functions and properties.

"The three day symposium breaks into four concentrated sessions with multiple speakers discussing gene networks, rewiring, metabolism, and genomes evolution" said Dr. Todd Mockler, the Geraldine and Robert Virgil Distinguished Investigator at the Danforth Center and Symposium organizer. "The themed sessions give attendees a variety of comprehensive lectures relating to synthetic and systems biology."

Registration will remain open until September 19th, 2012. The registration fee includes access to all sessions, social events, breaks and meals as indicated in the program. For a list of the esteemed speakers and topics please visit http://www.danforthcenter.org/fall_symposium/speakers.asp.

The registration fee for post-doctoral fellows, technicians or equivalent is reduced. Graduate students are welcome to participate for free. To register, please visit http://www.danforthcenter.org/symposium_registration/.

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Danforth Plant Science Center hosts 14th Annual Fall Symposium

BEVERLY, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Enzymatics, Inc., a rapidly growing provider of molecular biology reagents, today announced the appointment of Jonathan DiVincenzo as President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. DiVincenzo brings more than 20 years of industry experience to the role having previously served as Corporate Officer of Millipore Corporation andPresident of its Bioscience Division. Mr. DiVincenzo joins Enzymatics to continue the growth fueled by the immense scientific skill set, drive and ambition of the Companys workforce.

Jon is a visionary leader with a strong track record of building global businesses serving the life science industry," said Ian Ratcliffe, Chairman of Enzymatics Board of Directors. "His experience and capabilities in bringing new technologies to global markets make him uniquely qualified to lead Enzymatics through its next wave of growth."

Enzymatics co-founders Stephen Picone and Christopher Benoit commented, Enzymatics has evolved into a thriving business from a startup in 2007, growing to approximately 100 employees in just five years. We welcome Jon to the Enzymatics family, and with his extensive commercial and strategic experience, we will continue to build Enzymatics as the leading global supplier of high quality reagents and services to the rapidly expanding molecular genetics industry. Stephen Picone and Chris Benoit are remaining at the Company in active roles under the new titles, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Commercial Officer, respectively.

Mr. DiVincenzo has held several key leadership positions during his 18-year tenure at Millipore Corporation (now Merck Millipore).As the President of the Companys Bioscience Division, Jon led 1200 employees and grew the division to over $600 million of revenues. Prior to that he served as Vice President of Global Sales and Service and as Vice President of Marketing and R&D. For several years, he also held senior marketing and product management positions within Millipores Lab Water business (which later became part of the Bioscience Division) in Paris. Before Millipore, Jon worked for Orion Research (now part of ThermoFisher Scientific) as Product Manager and Technical Support Engineer and for General Electric Corporation in thermodynamics engineering. Jon holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University in Boston. He is a member of the Northeasterns College of Engineering Advisory Board and Board of Directors of the Analytical and Life Science Systems Association (ALSSA).

About Enzymatics

Enzymatics is a leading provider of molecular biology reagents and manufacturing services that delivers unrivaled quality, consistency, and value to the commercial genomic sciences community. The company manufactures in the USA under ISO 13485 certification, is focused on building long-term partnerships, and leverages internal and external innovation to commercialize breakthrough technologies. http://www.enzymatics.com

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Jonathan DiVincenzo Joins Enzymatics as President and Chief Executive Officer

EVRY, France--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Global Bioenergies (ALGBE.PA), an industrial biology company developing sustainable routes to light olefins, has been nominated as one of the five most innovative European biotech SMEs by EuropaBio, representing more than 1800 European companies.

EuropaBio, the principal organization to represent more than 1800 of Europes biotechnology companies, has communicated the choice of its expert panel for the Most Innovative EU Biotech SME Award 2012 in the press release which can be found under http://www.europabio.org/sme/press/who-are-europes-5-most-innovative-biotech-smes.

The award ceremony will be held on September 19th in the European Parliament by Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani, Commissioner for Industry & Entrepreneurship.

Marc Delcourt, co-founder and CEO of Global Bioenergies, comments: We are very honored by the choice of the expert panel of this prestigious biotechnology award, in particular because it was open to all European biotechnology companies acting in fields as diverse as pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, plant science, environment and industrial biology. We would like to thank EuropaBio for their recognition of our unique synthetic biology-based approach to convert renewable resources into light olefins, the core molecules of the petrochemical industry, and more generally for their support to the emerging industrial biology community.

About GLOBAL BIOENERGIES

Global Bioenergies is one of the few companies worldwide, and the only one in Europe, that is developing a process to convert renewable resources into hydrocarbons through fermentation. The Company initially focused its efforts on the production of isobutene, one of the most important petrochemical building blocks that can be converted into fuels, plastics, organic glass and elastomers. Global Bioenergies continues to improve the yield of its process and prepares the phase dedicated to pilot testing. The company is also looking to replicate this success with other members of the gaseous olefins family (propylene, ethylene, linear butylenes, butadiene), key molecules at the heart of petrochemical industry. Global Bioenergies is listed on NYSE Alternext Paris (FR0011052257 ALGBE).

Should you like to be kept informed, subscribe to our news feed on http://www.global-bioenergies.com

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GLOBAL BIOENERGIES nominated as one of the five most innovative European biotech SMEs by EuropaBio

Public release date: 3-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Dr. Hilary Glover hilary.glover@biomedcentral.com 44-020-319-22370 BioMed Central

The way that the visual centers of men and women's brains works is different, finds new research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Biology of Sex Differences. Men have greater sensitivity to fine detail and rapidly moving stimuli, but women are better at discriminating between colors.

In the brain there are high concentrations of male sex hormone (androgen) receptors throughout cerebral cortex, especially in the visual cortex which is responsible for processing images. Androgens are also responsible for controlling the development of neurons in the visual cortex during embryogenesis, meaning that males have 25% more of these neurons than females.

Researchers from Brooklyn and Hunter Colleges of the City University of New York compared the vision of men and women aged over 16 from both college and high school, including students and staff. All volunteers were required to have normal color vision and 20/20 sight (or 20/20 when corrected by glasses or contact lenses).

When the volunteers were required to describe colors shown to them across the visual spectrum it became obvious that the color vision of men was shifted, and that they required a slightly longer wavelength to experience the same hue as the women. The males also had a broader range in the center of the spectrum where they were less able to discriminate between colors.

An image of light and dark bars was used to measure contrast-sensitivity functions (CSF) of vision; the bars were either horizontal or vertical and volunteers had to choose which one they saw. In each image, when the light and dark bars were alternated the image appeared to flicker.

By varying how rapidly the bars alternated or how close together they were, the team found that at moderate rates of image change, observers lost sensitivity for close together bars, and gained sensitivity when the bars were farther apart. However when the image change was faster both sexes were less able to resolve the images over all bar widths. Overall the men were better able to resolve more rapidly changing images that were closer together than the women.

Prof Israel Abramov, who led this study commented, "As with other senses, such as hearing and the olfactory system, there are marked sex differences in vision between men and women. The elements of vision we measured are determined by inputs from specific sets of thalamic neurons into the primary visual cortex. We suggest that, since these neurons are guided by the cortex during embryogenesis, that testosterone plays a major role, somehow leading to different connectivity between males and females. The evolutionary driving force between these differences is less clear."

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The eyes have it: Men do see things differently to women

Albany Chehaw Parks Education and Animal Care Department and Georgia Southwestern State University (GSW) Biology Department are to begin a new partnership in conservation biology. For the first time during fall semester 2012, the University and the Zoo will collaborate in teaching a class in Zoo Animal Care and Maintenance.

It has always been a dream of mine to see Chehaw used to engage students as a learning institution, said Doug Porter, executive director for Chehaw. This new and exciting partnership will not only be beneficial to the Park and the University but to the greater community of Southwest Georgia.

The class will be a hands-on practice-oriented course in which more time will be spent working at the Zoo than sitting in the classroom. The goals of the course are to introduce students with a passion for animal husbandry and conservation to a career in zoo keeping. The course will cover the basics in zoo keeping, including, animal handling techniques, management, nutrition, breeding, behavior enrichment, exhibit design, zoo administration and public education of the major animal groups.

I am looking forward to getting this program off of the ground, shared Ian Brown, Ph.D., associate professor of biology at GSW. The chance to have our students working in this field as undergraduates will give them the experience that they will need when applying for future jobs in conservation.

The relationship between Chehaw Park and GSW has slowly gained momentum over the past eight years. As early as 2004, biology students began visiting the zoo to conduct behavioral observation laboratories on various animals such as the colobus monkey, flamingos, lemurs, meerkats and cheetahs. In recent years the zoo has used these student assignments as supporting material in grant applications. To date, three GSW biology majors have been hired as summer program instructors and another three have volunteered as zoo keeper assistants.

Zoo Animal Care and Maintenance students will spend their classroom time studying the theoretical aspects of the husbandry and welfare of non-domesticated animals in captivity and the logistics of zoological and conservation park operation. The overall focus in the classroom will be on the role that modern zoos must play in habitat and species conservation.

At Chehaw, the students will work alongside zoo professionals to learn the practical details of this important field. They also will be spending time with some of the Zoos leadership team, the Zoo director, the Zoo curator and Education coordinator to gain valuable insight into the inner workings of an AZA (Association of Zoos and Aquariums) -accredited Zoo.

This first class is being made possible through the willingness of university faculty and zoo personnel to take on additional workloads. In the future it is hoped that this initial class will grow into an entire zoo technology program with an emphasis in threatened species conservation.

The course instructors realize that modern Zoological and Conservation Parks and Aquariums utilize cutting edge technology to care for and breed many hundreds of animal species. Therefore most parks now require that their staff hold the minimum of a two-year and preferably a four-year degree in biology, animal husbandry or related field.

These new demands have opened up unique university-zoo collaboration opportunities to provide the requisite qualified zoo animal care personnel. Furthermore, in the near future a greater demand for zoos and aquariums is predicted, as their roles in animal conservation become increasingly more valuable.

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GSW, Chehaw collaborate in conservation biology