Pittcon plenary lecture announced

The Pittcon programme committee has announced that Dr Chad A. Mirkin, professor of chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA, will deliver the plenary lecture, “Polyvalent DNA Architectures: New Modalities For Intracellular Gene Regulation and Detection" at Pittcon 2011.

Describing his lecture Dr Mirkin said, "Over the past decade, we have developed methods for modifying nanoparticles with oligonucleotides and explored how they can be used as designer constructs for preparing highly ordered, highly functional materials. Over the course of these studies, we have discovered many unusual fundamental properties that make these materials particularly useful in biodiagnostics and intracellular gene regulation."

According to the organizers this lecture will focus on the use of these modified nanoparticles in the highly selective and sensitive detection of nucleic acids and proteins. It will also introduce the concept of the "antisense" particle and other similarly functionalized particles. Such particles exhibit a range of unique properties that make them very well suited for gene regulation. They can also be tailored to control the binding strength to complementary target sequences offering a means to control the degree of protein expression.

The plenary lecture will be part of the opening session for Pittcon 2011 that will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, from 13–18 March 2011.The lecture itself will take place on Sunday, 13 March at 16:30, in the Sidney Marcus Auditorium, Georgia World Congress Centre.

For more information visit www.pittcon.org