***The deadlines for registering for the 1st European Congress in Cell-Free Synthetic Biology (http://eccsb.epfl.ch/) are approaching. Deadlines 31st Jan and 28th Feb***

The 1st European Congress on Cell-Free Synthetic Biology, intends to bring together an interdisciplinary group of researchers from a broad range of scientific fields to i) present the current state-of-the-art in cell-free synthetic biology, ii) define the future direction of the field, and iii) to serve as an environment for sharing ideas and engaging in new collaborations.

Cell-free synthetic biology is a young but burgeoning sub-field of synthetic biology and has seen rapid and exciting progress in recent years. As the name implies, cell-free synthetic biology involves the implementation and characterization of biological systems in a cell-free environment and thus builds on advances in synthetic biology and classical biochemistry. Cell-free synthetic biology enables the precise and quantitative characterization of complex biological systems in a well-defined and controllable environment. Because of these and other advantages, cell-free synthetic biology will provide fundamental insights into biological network structure and function, including network robustness and evolvability. In addition, cell-free synthetic biology has the potential to become a powerful approach for the rapid prototyping of engineered biological systems, and has recently been shown to be applicable to the development of cheap, yet sophisticated molecular diagnostics. Although cell-free synthetic biology is still in its infancy, recent progress in the field indicates that it will have significant impact on the Life Sciences and Society in the long-term.

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