Systems Chemistry
May 26th - 30th, 2008, Bozen, Italy
See the report by Dave Winkler.
The scientific program lists all speakers and lecture topics.
Chemistry and biology are two of the most creative sciences. The ability of chemists to design and create their own research objects is a unique feature of this science, making it in at least some ways, perhaps the branch of science that is closest to art, although the art of biological systems goes often unmatched.
Since the holistic approach of transferring data from small reaction systems to more complex systems consisting of hundreds or thousands of components is usually impractical, understanding of chemical and biological systems is often best achieved through reductionism. Complex problems are broken down into their smallest parts, on the assumption that these behave in predictable, reproducible ways so that new theories or methods can be developed, tested and refined. Chemistry has been very creatively used to help understand pharmacological systems. Now modern biology through point mutations, siRNA, cloning, knockouts, is also providing many creative tools.
We are looking for ways to increase our understanding of nature going from methodologies with regard to chemical building blocks, to complex molecules, supra molecular assemblies and cells and organisms. Now that biologists and chemists are becoming able to modify and control biological systems, using the combined creativity and prowess of both disciplines, many hidden secrets of the biological systems in cells and organism can be begun to be understood and investigated in a structured manner. Parallels between contemporary chemistry and complex biological processes will be examined.
Scientific Committee: Martin Hicks and Carsten Kettner, Beilstein-Institut, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
