Journal of Biotechnology 136S (2008) S768–S771
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Biotechnology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbiotec
Abstracts
Special sessions I-III
SI-O-001
Special Session I International Collaboration in Biotechnology
International Industry-Academia Collaboration toward sustain-
able palm oil industry in Malaysia
Minato Wakisaka 1,∗ , Mohd. Ali Hassan 2 , Yoshihito Shirai 1
1 Graduate School of Life Science and Systems Engineering, Kyushu
Institute of Technology, 2-4 Hibikino, Wakamtsu, Kitakyushu 808-
0196, Japan
2 Department of Bioprocess Technology, Faculty of Biotechnology and
Biomolecular Sciences, University Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang,
Malaysia
Keywords: Palm oil; Biomass; CDM; Bio-refinery
E-mail address: wakisaka@life.kyutech.ac.jp (M. Wakisaka).
Palm oil industry in Malaysia is producing palm oil more than 12
million tonnes every year, while yielding more than 14 million of
empty fruit bunch (EFB) and 25 million tonnes of palm oil mill efflu-
ent (POME). In the POME treatment, huge anaerobic ponds (lagoon)
are adopted, generating large amount of methane, more than 20
times global warming effect than CO2 . The objective of this research
is to estimate actual methane emission from the POME treatment
and to find out any possibility to utilize generated methane as an
energy source under the clean development mechanism (CDM).
Methane emission of 0.238 kg CH4 per kg COD removed or
12.36 kg CH4 per tonne POME are obtained from actual mill oper-
ation throughout annual measurement. This indicates that more
than 200,000 tonnes of methane, which is equivalent to 4 million
tonnes of carbon dioxide, are estimated to be emitted from whole
Malaysia.
500 tonnes of methane fermentor installed to palm oil mill to
prevent GHG emission under the CDM. By this, lagoon system as
major source of local environment pollution necessary no more,
thus obtaining another 3–4 times large land area than mill. Our
proposal is to establish novel industry utilizing biogas energy for
value-added material or energy conversion of excess biomass, thus
enabling reduction of GHG and local environment pollution and
sustainable development of local community.
doi:10.1016/j.jbiotec.2008.07.1659
0168-1656/$ – see front matter
SII-O-001
Special Session II Biotechnology Education and Teaching
Teaching systems biotechnology at the interface of chemistry,
biology and engineering
Andreas Schmid
Laboratory of Chemical Biotechnology & ISAS-Institute of Analytical
Sciences, Dortmund, Germany
E-mail address: andreas.schmid@bci.uni-dortmund.de.
Systems biotechnology is an emerging new scientific field in bio-
chemical engineering at the interface to systems biology, building
on the established concepts and increasing availability of analytical
tools to access biological information on a system level.
The integration of system analysis, design and synthesis is
aiming at making available new products and depends on the appli-
cation of biological, chemical and engineering knowledge. This
posses a special challenge on university teaching programmes as
students have to develop a descriptive understanding of natural
sciences and a pragmatic engineering approach to the new field.
The presentation will discuss experiences based on the example
of our biochemical engineering curriculum at BCI, the Department
of Biochemical and Chemical Engineering at TU Dortmund. With
about 500 undergraduate students in biochemical engineering, BCI
is one of the largest university research departments of its kind in
Europe.
doi:10.1016/j.jbiotec.2008.07.1660
SII-O-002
Integrated education and talent development with upstream
and downstream of biotechnology
Xuehong Zhang
College of Life Science and Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiao Tong Univer-
sity, Shanghai 200240, China
E-mail address: xuehzhang@sjtu.edu.cn.
Biotechnology has developed rapidly and reached a new level in
China, but in biotechnology education, only a few students at
undergraduate or graduate level could meet the requirement of
 Abstracts / Journal of Biotechnology 136S (2008) S768–S771
industrious biotechnology. In university, biotechnology curricula
must provide a synthesis of biological sciences integrated with
biochemical engineering principles and engineering concepts. Also
biotechnology and bioprocesses training programs which include
various experimental courses and practical experience should inte-
grate engineering and concepts of life science. To develop the
talents with well understanding of knowledge and high-caliber skill
of upstream and downstream of biotechnology, integrated educa-
tion with life science and engineering is carried out and explored
in the national base of life science and biotechnology education,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The policy of the Base is “small size
of students but with high qualified talents”, and each year only
less than 60 students are enrolled. The education mode is “unified
fundamentals, various stage educations, distributary’s nurture, 6-
year consistent study”. After graduation, the students of the Base
are usually recruited by world-wide for academic, research, and
administration positions in research institutes and colleges or in
R&D divisions of biotechnology companies.
Keywords: Biotechnology; Education; Talent; Integration; Base
References
The Ministry of Education, China. 2002. Opinion on the building of “The national
base of life science and biotechnology education”. File No. 9.
Gillett, J.E., 2001. Chemical engineering education in the next century. Chem. Eng.
Technol. 24, 561–570.
Patrick, V., Pierre, P., Bernard, M., 2003. Toward an integrated biotechnological
engineering education program: a Canadian perspective. Nat. Biotechnol. 21,
1525–1527.
doi:10.1016/j.jbiotec.2008.07.1661
SII-O-003
Capacity building in biotechnology in Nigeria: The UNAAB expe-
rience
Sylvia Uzochukwu
Biotechnology Centre, University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (UNAAB),
Nigeria
Most African scientists resident in their home countries lack
expertise in contemporary molecular biology techniques required
to bring the benefits of modern biotechnology to their people. The
purpose of the capacity building experiment in the University of
Agriculture, Abeokuta (UNAAB) Nigeria, is to serve as a nucleus
for re-training otherwise highly trained Nigerian university teach-
ers and National Research Institute Scientists, in recombinant DNA
principles and practice. This is an attempt to prevent Nigeria in
particular and Africa in general, from being left behind in the
biotechnology revolution, and especially, to prevent the technology
from being resisted as belonging to the industrialized nations.
Short training courses in Practical Biotechnology designed to
demystify gene cloning and DNA technology, were organized for
scientists by introducing them to basic molecular biology tech-
niques in collaboration with internationally renowned scientists
in the subject area. Most of the scientists involved in this interna-
tional collaboration, were Nigerians in the Diaspora with expertise
in DNA technology, who volunteered their time to teach at the-
ses courses in order to assist their home country. The courses are
organized two or three times a year and are attended by University
lecturers, Research Institute scientists, and postgraduate students
from all over the country. They are usually completely hands-on.
Equipment and consumables for the training courses are usually
procured with direct or indirect support from international donors.
The project has trained about 300 scientists since its inception
in 2000 at the rate of about 30 scientists per course and 10 such
S769
training courses have so far been organized. The immediate effect
of the workshops has been an awareness among the participants,
of the potentials of modern biotechnology, with consequent estab-
lishment of Biotechnology Centres, departments and options, in the
institutions of the participants. The demand for the workshops is
very high, but the resources are very limited, so that not enough are
organized. However the participants no longer see the technology
as alien or imported and have begun to make attempts to use these
contemporary techniques in solving the problems of the country.
The approach is recommended to other developing countries, espe-
cially, for tackling resistance to products of genetic engineering
among indigenous scientists.
doi:10.1016/j.jbiotec.2008.07.1662
SII-O-004
Ethical perspectives: An integral part of biotechnology teaching
Chandralekha Duttagupta
Institute of Technology & Marine Engineering, Department of Biotech-
nology, D H Road, Amira, South 24 Pargonas, W Bengal, India
E-mail address: cduttagupta1@yahoo.com.
Biotechnology has undoubtedly come forward to the human-
benefit. The extraordinary scientific, popular and political reactions
generated by Cohen et al.’s experiments on recombinant DNA tech-
nology of 1973 was debated many times on various forums includ-
ing the two Asilomer meetings (Watson and Tooze, 1981; Barinaga,
2000). As biotechnology pushes the frontiers of human knowl-
edge, it starts to generate important ethical issues. What is ‘ethical’
in persuasion of biotechnology research and/or application? How
can one be sure that an apparently innocuous food/treatment/drug
would not cause havoc years later? How can a balance be struck
between benefits and risks? Important of all, who shall decide when
and where to draw the line? These issues are even more serious
in nations like India and other developing countries, where poor
awareness along with many social taboos and strictures make the
‘ethical queries’ more difficult to understand, grasp and pursue.
Teaching Bioethics in India is a challenging issue. My inten-
sion/aim in this presentation is to share and exchange my
experiences in Bioethics (in research and teaching) with the
international biotechnology-community and also to obtain sug-
gestions/views to further strengthen our methodology. I am a
biomedical researcher for over 30 years and currently teaching
the course on “Bioethics” (along with other biotechnology sub-
jects) to the undergraduate biotechnology–engineering students
in a suburban college near Kolkata, India. I explain to my students
the meaning of Nuremberg Codes of ethics; justify the fundamen-
tal ethical principles; the necessity of the ethical-guidelines from
various Nations; to make them aware of their responsibility and
respectability towards the society and environment; how their
research/application (in biotechnology) can secure one way or the
other, the well being of humanity and human society; and above
all how to develop themselves into a matured rational individual.
References
Barinaga, M., 2000. Asilomer revisited: Lessons for today? Science 287, 1584–1585.
Cohen, S.N., Chang, A.C.Y., Boyer, H.W., Helling, R.B., 1973. Construction of biolog-
ically functionable bacterial plasmids in vitro. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 70,
3240–3244.
Watson, J.D., Tooze, J., 1981. W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco.
doi:10.1016/j.jbiotec.2008.07.1663