Life sciences are an enormous field that studies life in all its forms, from bacteria to begonias to beluga whales. Life sciences aim to learn everything about living organisms on this planet, including plants, animals, viruses, and bacteria. Life sciences study the biology of how these organisms live, which is why you may hear this group of specialties referred to as “biology”. As you might expect, with an estimated 8.7 million species of animals, about 400,000 species of plants, and countless species of bacteria and viruses, there are a lot of different forms of life you can study. Many life science researchers specialize in one class or organism, and some specialties such as zoology have even more subspecialties.
Biological Sciences
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms. Modern biology is a vast and eclectic field composed of many specialized disciplines that study the structure, function, growth, distribution, evolution, or other features of living organisms. However, despite the broad scope of biology, there are certain general and unifying concepts that govern all study and research:
- genes (consisting of DNA or RNA) are the basic unit of heredity
- evolution accounts for the unity and diversity seen among living organisms
- all organisms survive by consuming and transforming energy
- all organisms maintain a stable internal environment
Advanced Sciences
Advanced sciences encompass the exploration of highly specialized and complex fields of study that push the boundaries of human knowledge. Unlike basic sciences, which focus on foundational concepts and principles, advanced sciences delve deeper into intricate phenomena, applying sophisticated methodologies and technologies to solve real-world problems and uncover new frontiers of understanding. These fields are inherently interdisciplinary, integrating principles from various domains such as physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and computer science to tackle the most challenging questions of our time.
Natural products are chemical compounds or substances produced by living organisms that usually have pharmacological or biological activities for use in drug discovery. The chemical diversity, structural complexity, affordability, lack of substantial toxic effects, and inherent biological activity of natural products makes them ideal candidates for new therapeutics. Microorganisms produce a large variety of antimicrobial agents; plant and marine organisms are proven rich sources of potent chemicals with anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and anticancer activities. Venoms and toxins often specifically interact with macromolecular targets in the body. Attention is also devoted to herbal medicine, plant-derived drugs, phytopharmaceuticals, bioactive proteins, anti-nutrients, synthetic drugs, ethnopharmacology, biodiversity as well as legislation and research strategies.
BioNat Theme
If Mother Nature gives us the disease, Mother Nature also provides the cure. The word pharmaceutical comes from the Greek word “pharmakeia”. The earliest drugstores date to the middle ages. The first known drugstore was opened by Arabian pharmacists in Baghdad in 754, and soon after many more began operating throughout the medieval Islamic world and eventually medieval Europe. By the 19th century, many of the drugstores in Europe and North America had eventually developed into larger pharmaceutical companies; the source of all these drugs sold in drug stores was natural products. According to some estimates, up to 75% of the drugs being used today have their roots in natural products. For instance, most modern medicines with a market in billions of dollars such as Statins for the heart, Metformin for diabetes, Steroids for inflammation, Aspirin for pain, and chemotherapeutic agents (such as paclitaxel, camptothecin, vinblastine, vincristine, thalidomide) for cancer are derived from natural sources. This conference is organized to discuss the past, present, and future contributions of natural products to drug discovery. We will invite leaders in their fields of Pharma, Drug discovery, Medicine, Nutrition, Agriculture, and Biotechnology to present their prominent findings at a venue in Cairo, Egypt where most of this kind of work has its origins.