Science in the Past, Present & Future
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Bibliothek Bar
Kohlenberg 7, 4051 Basel
MONDAY 20th MAY 2019
DOORS OPEN 6.00PM, EVENT 6:30PM-9:30PM
Dr. Idoia Grau Sologestoa
Department of Prehistoric and Natural Archaeology
University of Basel
Twitter: @idoiagrau
Written in bones: understanding history through human-animal relations
18:45 - 19:15 ( Talk in English)
Dr Idoia Grau Sologestoa is zooarchaeologist, that is an archaeologist that works with animal remains found in archaeological sites. Mainly, zooarchaeology is the study of human history through the archaeological analysis the interactions between humans and animals in the past. Zooarchaeologists address complex questions related to human-animal relations, symbolism, beliefs, status, ritual, taboos, industries, markets and ecologies, of any chronological period of human history. Dr Grau Sologestoa will introduce the zooarchaeological discipline and her current research project, which aims at understanding changes in animal husbandry at the end of the Roman times and the beginning of the Middle Ages in the Rhine Valley.
Weblinks
https://duw.unibas.ch/de/ipna/team/grau-idoia/
https://sites.google.com/prod/view/zoociedad-zoociety
Dr. Ismael Seanez
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
Neurotechnologies to restore movement after spinal cord injury
19:30 - 20:00 (Talk in English)
Spinal cord injury dramatically affects movement and balance below the level of the injury, and current conventional therapies have shown limited potential for recovery. In this talk, Dr. Seanez will introduce a targeted therapy for humans that combines robotic and neurotechnologies in order to enable people with spinal cord injury to regain movement. Moreover, he will present recent advances towards developing a new generation of brain-controlled neurostimulation therapies.
Jaicy Vallapurackal, MSc
Department of Chemistry, University of Basel
Research group of Prof. Dr. Thomas Ward
Development of a microfluidics-based assay for the directed evolution of artificial metalloenzymes
20:15 - 20:45 (Talk in English)
Enzymes are a remarkable feature of nature: they evolved over thousands of years and are exceptionally efficient in carrying out certain biological transformations, such as photosynthesis, DNA-replication etc.
Chemists are now interested in expanding nature’s toolbox to non-natural reactions. But the evolution of such an artificial enzymatic system is a very tedious and time-consuming task. So, what can we do to make this process faster and easier?
In our lab, we work with an artificial deallylase which is capable of uncaging a protected coumarin. This reaction yields a fluorescent readout which is easily detectable. Development of a microfluidics-based high-throughput assay coupled to fluorescence activated droplet sorting (FADS) would allow us to screen large protein libraries in an iterative manner and therefore evolve the catalytic activity of such an artificial enzyme.
