Health Newsunforgettable experience of a lifetime!
guest blog: Juliet Daet
Winnipeg, Manitoba
The Canada-Wide Science Fair 2009 was an unforgettable experience of a lifetime! I couldn’t help but be excited the entire week. Many students wondered how I could possibly be so pumped with energy, despite the fact that the Fair was hosted by my own hometown. It was just wonderful to attend the prestigious event, with all the hometown researchers who I had the pleasure of working with around me, and shower me with encouraging words and support! This week was the fruition of tireless lab hours, too many all-nighters, and an undying passion for research.
Hydrocarbon Metagenomics
guest post from
Gijs van Rooijen Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer, Genome Alberta
A few days while at BIO09, Genome Alberta announced funding for a Genomics Project led out the University of Calgary by Dr Gerrit Voordouw called “Metagenomics for Greener Production of and Extraction of Hydrocarbon Energy”.
This Project has been a long time coming and has special significance for me. In 1988, I left the Netherlands, to work as part of a Student Exchange in a Petroleum Microbiology lab, that just happened to be the lab of Dr Gerrit Voordouw, a scientist I got to know in the Netherlands in the early eighties. My Student’s Research Project at the time was called “Cloning and Sequencing of Cytochrome C553 from Desulfovibrio vulgaris”. By all accounts this Student’s Project was successful and resulted in a scientific publication in a respected scientific journal. The main purpose of the research was to decode the genetic information of a single gene (about 1000 basepairs long) in an single organism that called the oil and gas environments “home”.
Fast forward 20 years and we have a new project which proposes to characterize whole genomes of bacterial communities resulting in billions of basepairs of sequence information. This makes my achievement back in 1988 look miniscule but then we are living in a genomics era now, and have technology available today, we could only dream about in 1988.
Experiences of the Gold Medal Winners
At the Canada-Wide Science Fair in the Life Science category, there is only one gold medal project at the senior level. And this year that project was done by two young scientists, Haiyu (Mike) Bao and Zichao (Allan) Kang. This has been a busy week for Mike and Allan catching up after the fair which brought them $32,000 in prizes and scholarships. They had exams to write and homework to do. They were featured on Global National this week, and they took the time out to write a guest blog about their experiences and their award winning project.
Athens Without Ever Leaving the U.S.
Yesterday, I took time from BIO2009 in Atlanta to meet some colleagues at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. Given my relative proximity to Athens (compared to Edmonton that is), it seemed like the logical thing to do, and the 90 minute car ride against rush hour traffic made things a breeze. It was relaxing to drive along the heavily tree lined freeways, especially since I was escaping the snow back home. I was there to pick up some materials, but as it happened my trip coincided with the harvest of a pine tree which only happens once every year or two. They nicely allowed me to pitch in a get my hands back on something scientific other than a quarterly report. What I also received was an alternate definition of ‘large scale genomics’, working on a tree that was approximately 40 years old.
A scientific oasis
How quickly we’ve reached the last day of BIO 2009 and I have to wonder where the time has gone. The last two days have been packed solid starting with a great view of the Canadian pavilion opening on Tuesday. As we were right next door, foot traffic by the booth was high for quite a while and again I had excellent discussions with people interested in science that Genome Alberta is funding (many on the pine beetle project, a personal favorite of mine). I liken the booth to a scientific oasis in a sales desert where people can relax for a few minutes from the high powered trade show floor. Also, these projects seem to bring out a personal connection with people as they reminisce about past experiences.
Plants as Chemists
guest post from
Gijs van Rooijen Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer, Genome Alberta
In the late eighties, early nineties, I started my research career as a Graduate Student exploring the potential of plants to produce high value proteins unknown to these plants. This was done through the introduction of gene sequences from any source (human, animal and even leeches) to produce proteins in plants such as the signaling molecule Interleukin-1, the milk clotting enzyme chymosin, and the blood clotting buster hirudin.
This research was started next door to the lab of Dr Peter Facchini, who is now the co-leader (together with Dr Vince Martin of Concordia) of a Genome Alberta Research project entitled “Synthetic BioSystems for the Production of High Value Metabolites”. It would seem that in my own research back then I had not fully appreciated the value that could be derived from the plant sequences that are contained with a plant itself. In the Research project announced today the sequences contained with a diverse range of plants will not be explored for their potential to produce proteins, as was the case in my own research about 20 years ago, rather these sequences will be examined and explored for their potential to produce enzymes that catalyze reactions that can lead to interesting and valuable metabolites.
Going Where No One Has Gone Before!
A couple of days ago, I went to see the new Star Trek movie. I did not see this movie alone; I was with a large number of students who were participating in the Canada-Wide Science Fair (CWSF) held this year in Winnipeg. It is an opportunity to meet up with approximately 475 high-level science students from across this entire country, representing 102 Regional Science Fairs and competing for more than $1,000,000 in awards. And if that is not impressive enough, many of these students were competing in their second national science competition this month.
The other major competition attracting top students is the Sanofi-Aventis BioTalent Challenge (SABC).
A return to BIO - Atlanta 2009
Hello everyone from Atlanta as I make my return to the blogging world here at BIO2009!! Last year was my introduction to the BIO conference world (the trade show was like a small city with so many attendees and exhibitors) and I look forward to picking up right where I left off. I arrived here late afternoon on Sunday and my first taste of southern hospitality had a decisively Canadian flavor to it with a trip to the downstairs level of Dailey’s Restaurant for the Canadian Kick-off to BIO. In a place whose website quotes a dress code of ‘jeans to tuxedos’, most Canadians felt at home somewhere in between as we enjoyed ourselves and eased into BIO in a slightly more intimate setting than last year’s kick-off. The BIO journey resumed this morning as we setup and organized our booth on the trade show floor. It was great to see familiar faces and renew some acquaintances in the booths around the Alberta pavilion. Armed with a fresh array of banners, information, and some really cool pictures from the Digital Art contest winner and runners up, we now await the trade show floor opening on Tuesday morning at 10am. If you’re in at the convention this year, drop by and chat with us at booth 3603. Now it’s off to attend some networking interactions with bloggers first, then the BIO community at large in the opening reception.
Welcome to Dailey's
No need to get up at 3:00a today to get everything done on time and no airports, luggage, or customs to deal with. Instead, time to sit down at the keyboard to start writing and get ready to meet the biotech crowd in Atlanta.
I went in the Georgia World Congress Center to see the space where we'll be setting up, and like last year's BIO you find yourself in a very spacious building. Finding space for a trade show featuring 2,200 exhibitors and meeting rooms for 20,000 conference attendees means it can't be held just anywhere or in any city, and the Congress Centre looks like a good location. It is located near the CNN Centre and was a quick subway ride from the hotel followed by a 10 minute walk to the CWWG. ( which today was a very, very, wet walk )
Registration tomorrow could be a challenge because there was already a big lineup just for exhibitor registration but we'll see how it goes.
Genome Alberta in Atlanta
Up at 3:00a, shower, and then spend some time ambling around in the dark with the dogs accompanied by the howl of the coyotes and the hooting of the owl. Hanging around nearby were the horses, donkeys, a few deer and probably a few unknowns hiding out in the trees or around the pasture.
The rather ungawdly hour and the company I had comes from the fact I live in a rural area some distance from the Calgary airport and I had to get moving early make time for a stop at the office to pick up 2 new displays we'll be unveiling at BIO2009 in Atlanta. But I made it, and while not eveyone has much good to say about Air Canada everything was on time, my luggage made the same trip I did, and I'm now in Atlanta. ( Though I spend a fair bit of time in the city covering the range from chilly, rural Canada, to hot & humid midtown Atlanta is still cultute shock.)
I haven't actually been able to open the new roll-up displays yet so when we set them up at the Georgia World Congress Centre I'll be getting the same first look at our PhytoMetaStyn and Hydrocarbon Metagenomic science displays. Sean Caffrey put together the Hydrocarbon Metagenomics poster while Jeff Parker and Peter Faccini worked on the PhytoMetaSyn ( aka Sythntheric Plant Biology ) display.
More details on the 2 brand, spanking new projects will be available early next week after the formal announcements.
Also joining me at BIO is Matt Bryman, Project Manager for the Tria Projects and our CEO and President Dr. David Bailey will be on hand for the project announcements. We were also lucky enough to have BIO invite Dr. Christoph Sensen to set up the portable CAVEman in
Atlanta. We're located in the Alberta Pavilion (booth 3603 ) but the CAVE needs some particular viewing conditions so you'll have to go over to booth 4561 where Mei Xiao and Jung Soh will be on hand to show off the CAVE.
Here's a preview of some of what the portable CAVE will be offering BIO attendees:
Full Genome Sequence of H1N1 Announced
I was amazed and surprised by how many people wrote to me after my last blog on the flu. It was even pointed out that within a few hours of the release of that blog, the World Health Organization (WHO) actually did change the name from Swine Flu to H1N1. Most of the media immediately picked up on that as well, and started to refer to the flu by that latter name.