Jan 17 Lecture – Biofuels and DNA sequencing

The National Institutes of Health have a goal of $1000 to sequence a human genome. Last year in Lima, Peru, 190 countries committed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Maybe not intuitively, these two goals are tightly connected. In the first part of the talk, Dr. Sorek will discuss the basics of molecular biology, explaining how we currently understand genetic information. He  will also discuss our current energy sources and some alternative, focusing on bioenergy. In the second part, he will connect these two areas, explaining how advances in molecular biology can contribute to the development of alternative energy.

 

Nadav Sorek is a post doctoral researcher at the Energy BioScience Institute. As a plant molecular biologist, his research is focused on understanding basic molecular mechanisms that will allow us to unlock the natural potential from plants to enhance and diversify the benefits humanity gets from agriculture.