Giving_to

Are We Playing God with Redesigned Genes?

By Prof King Chow

Division of Life Science

Date:	09 Apr 2014

Time:	12:30 pm - 2 pm (Lunch included)

Venue:	HKUST Business School Central 15/F, Hong Kong Club Building 3A Charter Road, Central, Hong Kong.

Remarks:	Seats are limited and first-come-first-served. Registration starts one month before the talk.

Enquires:	2358 5019 / science.for.lunch@ust.hk

Modern technologies have made us understand the biological world far better, offering hope for human health, giving us a firm grasp of the mechanisms underlying diseases, enabling their early diagnosis, risk assessment, and opening up new treatment strategies. They even allow us to do the unthinkable—redesigning genes to fight infection, develop wonder drugs, improve the environment and provide cheaper energy. Is synthetic biology the cure to all our ills or are we playing God with it? Do we reject this novel technology or harness it for the benefit of humanity?

Prof King Chow
Division of Life Science

King Chow is Professor of Life Science and Biomedical Engineering at HKUST. He earned his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Baylor College of Medicine and was a Belfer Fellow in the Molecular Genetics Department at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His research spans a whole spectrum of biological sciences from basic molecular genetics to synthetic biology, probing into organ pattern formation, tissue differentiation, neural wiring, animal communication and evolution. He engages in collaborative research by integrating physics, mathematics and engineering in his exciting pursuits. He is an innovative teacher, who teaches online and across disciplines, winning the Michael G Gale Medal of Distinguished Teaching at HKUST.