COST Action DYNALIFE Conference in Venice

In the fall of 2022, a new COST action titled DYNALIFE (Information, Coding, and Biological Function: the Dynamics of Life) was launched, and Jitka Čejková was elected as the Working Group 4 leader and science communication coordinator. This week, the first major conference took place in Venice, and Jitka would like to share her summary of the entire event.

We are pleased to share with you the successful outcome of the "80, 70, 20 Conference: Towards Excellence and Convergence Research in Theoretical Biology," which took place from May 2nd to May 4th in Venice, Italy. The conference celebrated three important anniversaries in the history of theoretical biology, including the 80th anniversary of Erwin Schrödinger's book "What is Life?" and the definition of the new field of "Epigenetics" by Conrad Waddington in 1943, the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953, and the 20th anniversary of the publication of the first complete sequencing of the human genome in 2003.

The conference featured four keynote speakers, including Achille Giacometti, Director of the European Center for Living Technology (Venice, Italy), Paul Davies, Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science (USA), Alberto Credi, pioneer on molecular motors and Pro-Rector of the University of Bologna, and Michael Russell, pioneer of the theory of the origin of life in marine hydrothermal vents. The event also included short and long lectures, as well as a poster section.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the organizers for their hard work in making this conference a success. We hope that this first conference has kickstarted four years of fruitful collaboration within our COST action. Please feel free to visit our website to stay up to date with our progress and upcoming events. You can also find a photo gallery from the conference on our website, along with all the essential information regarding our COST action.

Thank you to all who participated and contributed to the success of the conference. We look forward to continuing our work together and achieving further excellence and convergence research in theoretical biology.