About

How does a single-celled embryo develop into a living, breathing complex organism? How does the developing embryo “know” where to form a head and where to form a tail? How does it determine what is up and what is down? Knowing that the mechanism of embryonic development is encoded in its DNA is not enough! We must understand how the products of this DNA interact to create complex life. This lecture discusses how studies of the humble fruitfly can be used to answer these fundamental questions. In essence it aims to understand, how nature makes a fly and how bioengineers imitate nature to learn more about embryonic development. About the Speaker: Moeez Ahmed Khan is a synthetic biologist, now based at Imperial College London. Moeez’s research focuses on constructing super-spreading genes that can be used for Malaria eradication. His work involves synthetic biology, genetic engineering, classical genetics, developmental biology, and entomology. Moeez has a bachelor’s in Molecular Genetics from King’s College London, a Master’s in Synthetic Biology from University College London, and is due to graduate with a PhD from the Royal Veterinary College. He also has 7 years of experience in science communication, having worked closely with the social enterprise; Science Fuse and his own organization; Genes and Machines. Genes and Machines aims to inculcate curiosity for the life sciences amongst young Pakistanis.