More than 600 students from five institutes of Totana and Alhama participated yesterday in the conference on genetic editing at Cine Velasco, organized by the General Directorate of Attention to Diversity and Educational Quality of the Ministry of Education and the Foundation of Medical Studies of Molina de Segura (FEM), within an informative tour offered by Professor Lluís Montonliú by different municipalities of the Region.
The Councilor of the City of Totana, Antonia Camacho, presented the talk and welcomed the guest, thanking the promoting entities for the fact that Totana hosted an informative event of such interest to students of Science and Technology of the institutes of both municipalities disseminate their knowledge within the Young Researchers program.
This conference, organized by the General Directorate of Attention to Diversity and Educational Quality, will be given by the prestigious Professor Lluis Montoliu who collaborates with the Foundation for Medical Studies of Molina de Segura (FEM), and disseminates their knowledge within the Youth program Researchers
The conference, which was scheduled under the title "What is the use of gene editing with CRISPR tools?", During which the CRISPR technology was addressed;
which is a recent genome editing tool that acts as molecular scissors capable of cutting any DNA sequence of the genome in a specific way and allowing the insertion of changes in it.
The conference was aimed at students of 4th ESO, 1st and 2nd year of Bachelor of Science and Technology;
and had an approximate duration of something more than one hour along with the turn of questions that the attending students did.
The students from the IES "Valle de Leyva" and "Miguel Hernández" from Alhama de Murcia also attended the meeting.
Who is Lluís Montoliú?
Lluís Montoliú (Barcelona 1963) is a graduate (1986) and doctor (1990) in Biology from the University of Barcelona.
He is currently a scientific researcher of the CSIC at the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB), researcher and member of the Steering Committee of the Network Biomedical Research Center for Rare Diseases (CIBER-ER), of the ISCIII.
He has been an honorary professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid since 1998-2018 and is the Director of the Spanish node of the European Mutant Mouse Archive (EMMA-Infrafrontier) since 2007.
In his laboratory he investigates basic topics (how genes are organized in the genome) and applied (animal models for the study of rare human diseases, such as albinism).
He has worked throughout his professional life, since 1986, with genetically modified organisms, doing his doctoral thesis in plant molecular genetics, in corn, and later his studies have focused on the mouse, as an experimental animal model, since 1989. He has made two postdoctoral stays at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg (Germany, 1991-1995) and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (1995-96) before joining, in 1997, the CNB in ​​Madrid.
He has made relevant technological contributions to animal transgenesis, such as the use of artificial chromosomes, and has been a pioneer in the introduction, use and dissemination of CRISPR technology for genetic editing in our country.
He has published more than 100 scientific articles, and is co-inventor of several patents in the field.
In 2006 he founded the International Society of Transgenic Technologies (ISTT) of which he was its President until 2014. He is currently President of the European Pigment Cell Research Society (ESPCR) and member of the boards of several additional scientific societies (IFCPS, IMGS , ACB).
He is a member of the Ethics Committee of the CSIC and of the Ethics panel of the European Research Council (ERC) in Brussels.
In addition to research, he is interested and passionate about bioethics, training and scientific dissemination.
In 2018 he received the ISTT award for his exceptional contribution to transgenic technologies, the Honor Plaque of the Spanish Association of Scientists for his contributions to Spanish science and the SINCronizados Award from the SINC Agency for his commitment to scientific dissemination and collaboration with the media.
