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Engineering Life

→ Europe/Berlin
MIAPbP

MIAPbP
Description

Life, as we know it today, is characterized by a set of biophysical properties that include the ability to grow, divide and replicate, and evolve in complexity via selection and distinction. From a chemical perspective, such processes are realized by chemical reactions and assembly processes that turnover reactants, and this turnover is driven by the supply of mass and energy. From a theoretical perspective, this supply maintains the system away from thermodynamic equilibrium leading to continuous fluxes of energy and mass, even in the stationary state of the system. To engineer living systems or specific life-like processes, unified approaches are necessary that incorporate concepts from biophysics, system chemistry, and theoretical physics.

 

This workshop aims to bring together scientists from these three fields to discuss the current challenges to engineering life-like processes. The workshop will provide a collaborative environment that includes plenary talks on the question “What is life?” and the related challenges to engineering it. Moreover, there will be sessions with interactive short talks and brainstorming sessions with plenty of time to freely gather and develop novel approaches to how to engineer life.

  • Monday 13 March
    • 1
      Goals of workshop
      Speakers: Christoph Weber, Job Boekhoven, Kerstin Göpfrich
    • 12:00
      LUNCH
    • 3
      Introduction: The idea of group discussions and perspective writing
    • 4
      Group discussion: What is the goal of engineering life?

      collaborator meetings,
      jointly writing a perspective article on “Challenges on Engineering Life”

    • 15:00
      Coffee Break
    • 5
      Selected short talk - "Coacervate protocells formed by native chemical ligation"
      Speaker: Annemiek Slootbeek
    • 6
      Selected short talk - "Cycles of (de)hydration far away from equilibrium catalyses chemical processes"
      Speaker: Ivar Haugerud
    • 7
      Selected short talk - "Chirality transfer from a 3D macro shape to the molecular level through asymmetric secondary flows"
      Speaker: Alessandro Sorrenti
    • 17:00
      Social Event: Bavarian Brotzeit
  • Tuesday 14 March
    • 8
      From self-organization to self-division
      Speaker: Petra Schwille
    • 9
      Group Discussion: Life is functional evolution. But how to define & measure function?
    • 12:00
      LUNCH
    • 10
      Selected short talk - "Ghost in the cell: artificial cells via enzyme-mediated polymer synthesis and self-assembly"
      Speaker: Andrea Belluati
      Belluati_Slides.pdf
    • 11
      Selected short talk - "Linking molecular-scale to mesoscale dynamics in biomolecular condensates"
      Speaker: Nicola Galvanetto
    • 12
      Selected short talk - "Toward building an artificial nucleus"
      Speaker: Eva Bertosin
    • 14:30
      Coffee Break
    • 13
      Collective intelligence - from bugs to bots
      Speaker: L Mahadevan
    • 14
      Group Discussion: Engineered biotectonics - from cells to ecosystems
  • Wednesday 15 March
    • 15
      Molecular information processing in chemical reaction networks
      Speaker: Wilhelm Huck
    • 16
      Group Discussion
    • 12:00
      LUNCH
    • 17
      Selected short talk - "Systems chemistry of aminoacyl phosphates: Spontaneous and selective peptide oligomerisation in water driven by phase changes."
      Speaker: Kun Dai
      Dai_Abstract.pdf
    • 18
      Selected short talk - "Heat flows purify >50 building blocks of life and boost their reactivity"
      Speaker: Thomas Matreux
    • 19
      Selected short talk - "Reciprocal Coupling in Chemically Fueled Assembly: A ReactionCycle Regulates Self-Assembly and Vice Versa"
      Speaker: Brigitte Kriebisch
    • 14:30
      Coffee Break
    • 20
      General Group discussion: Should synthetic cells have synthetic hardware?
    • 21
      General Group discussion: Joint perspective writing
  • Thursday 16 March
    • 22
      Physics of Active Emulsions
      Speaker: Frank Jülicher
    • 23
      Group Discussion: How to use non-equilibrium physics to create life-like behaviors?
    • 12:00
      LUNCH
    • 24
      Selected short talk - "Ordered structures from liquid-liquid phase separation by supramolecular polymerizations"
      Speaker: Hailin Fu
    • 25
      Selected short talk - "Lesion-Induced DNA Amplification as a Model System for Autonomous Nucleotide Self-Replication"
      Speaker: Juli Gibbs
    • 26
      Selected short talk - "A DNA segregation module for synthetic cells"
      Speaker: Mai Tran
    • 14:30
      Coffee Break
    • 27
      An RNA world of possibilities: the satellite, the robot and the replicase
      Speaker: Ebbe Sloth Andersen
    • 28
      Group Discussion: “How do we design RNA systems that sense, compute, and act? And how do we make them replicate, adapt, and evolve.”
  • Friday 17 March
    • 29
      Hike with short talks and lunch at mountain hut
  • Monday 20 March
    • 30
      Bridging the RNA and lipid worlds: unexpected roles for lipids in RNA regulation
      Speaker: James Saenz
    • 31
      Group discussion: How do we program heritable organization into synthetic life?
    • 12:00
      LUNCH
    • 32
      Selected short talk - "Key features in the design and fabrication of living robots"
      Speaker: Maria Guix
    • 33
      Information processing in simple organisms: A case study
      Speaker: Karen Alim
    • 34
      Selected short talk - "Quasi-Laminar Active Nematic Flows Under Confinement"
      Speaker: Olga Bantysh
    • 14:30
      Coffee Break
    • 35
      Communicating Active Matter
      Speaker: Erwin Frey
    • 36
      Group discussion: Can theory contribute to the field of soft robotics, and what is soft robotics anyway?
    • 17:00
      Social Event
  • Tuesday 21 March
    • 37
      Cell-free protein synthesis: the engine of synthetic cells?
      Speaker: Nadanai Lauhakunakorn
      Laohakunakorn_Slides.pdf
    • 38
      Group Discussion: How should we build and sustain self-regenerating systems?
    • 12:00
      LUNCH
    • 39
      Selected short talk - "Phase-separated compartments as biochemical reactors"
      Speaker: Sudarshana Laha
    • 40
      Selected short talk - "DNA origami and DNA droplet components for synthetic cells"
      Speaker: Shelley Wickham
    • 41
      Selected short talk - "Influence of the extracellular domain size on the dynamic behavior of membrane proteins"
      Speaker: Cenk Gurdap
    • 14:30
      Coffee Break
    • 42
      General Group discussion: Open questions on perspective writing
  • Wednesday 22 March
    • 43
      How dynamic molecular networks can accumulate life-like properties
      Speaker: Sijbren Otto
    • 44
      Group discussion: How to tame chemistry?
    • 12:00
      LUNCH
    • 45
      Selected short talk - "Template-based information transfer in chemically fueled dynamic combinatorial libraries"
      Speaker: Christine Kriebisch
    • 46
      Selected short talk - "Reaction-Directed Assembly: Controlling Changes of Membrane Topology by Reaction Cycles"
      Speaker: Gregor Ibbeken
    • 47
      Selected short talk -“TBD”
      Speaker: Alexander Bergmann
    • 14:30
      Coffee Break
    • 48
      Spatial proximity effects for engineering life
      Speaker: Ulrich Gerland
    • 49
      Group discussion: How can we exploit spatial arrangement for engineering life?
  • Thursday 23 March
    • 50
      A lesson from early cells
      Speaker: Claudia Bonfio
    • 51
      Group Discussion: Compartmentalisation: natural vs. artificial building blocks
    • 12:00
      LUNCH
    • 52
      Selected short talk - "Exploring the role of class I myosins in plasma membrane organization using an in vitro reconstitution approach"
      Speaker: Bhagyashri Mahajan
    • 53
      Selected short talk - "The dynamics of phase separation and wetting in cell-free expression system"
      Speaker: Shuzo Kato
    • 54
      Selected short talk - "Bottom-up building a self-regenerating microfluidic biochemical constructor"
      Speaker: Pao-Wan Lee
    • 14:30
      Coffee Break
    • 55
      Life but not alive: bioengineering with synthetic cells
      Speaker: Kate Adamala
    • 56
      Group discussion: How can we build an interoperable synthetic cell systems?
    • 57
      Closing remarks
      Speakers: Christoph Weber, Job Boekhoven, Kerstin Göpfrich