Integrated project to evolve programmable artificial cells

Life is all about real-world information processing, but the gap between computers and living systems is still formidable. The European Commission has approved an Integrated Project (PACE, total volume 8.5 M) that will create the foundation for a new generation of embedded information technology using programmable, self-assembling artificial cells. Distributed intelligent technical systems with self-organizing and evolvable life-like properties are required both to make the next generation of self-repairing computer and robotics technology and to direct all kinds of production and remediation on the nanoscale. Human genome pioneer Craig Venter and Nobel Prize winner Hamilton Smith recently announced their intention to create an artificial cell by simplifying existing cells, but the result can only be strongly related with current biology.
By contrast, the integrated project PACE will focus on the IT potential of truly artificial cells: addressing both the technical opportunities of programmable artificial cells and an evolutionary roadmap to producing them under the control of current computers. Such artificial cells will be useful because of their distinctness from, rather than similarity to current biology. A consortium of some 13 partners and 2 cooperating groups from 8 European countries, including Switzerland and Lithuania, and several USA organizations will pioneer this new approach under the IST-FET section of the 6th Framework Program (FP6). The consortium will use complex system methodologies and evolving physical control systems to approach programmable artificial cell evolution (PACE) in cooperation with leading pioneering chemists. This method will enable the microscopic chemical information processing systems making up artificial cells to be designed and assembled automatically from non- living materials. See also the PACE web site at http:// www.protocell.org/PACE.
Project coordinator Prof. John McCaskill, who has taken leave to coordinate the project as guest professor at the University of Bochum in Germany, told CORDIS News that a multidisciplinary consortium is vital for addressing these issues. The PACE partnership currently includes partners with competencies in Complex Systems, Embedded Systems, Robotics, Evolution, Statistics, Chemical kinetics, Physical Simulation, Microfluidics, Organic and Bioorganic Chemistry, Computer Interfaces, Control Systems, as well as with Standards and Learning Services.
PACE also includes an outreach and training program designed to equip a new generation of scientists and engineers to take advantage of programmable artificial cell evolution. To this end a new European Center for Living Technology is to be established in Venice, supported by the European Union, the city of Venice, and the University of Venice Ca Foscari. Researchers will be invited to the Center to collaborate on PACE and related multidisciplinary projects involving living technology. The Center will also proactively foster informed public discussion of the novel social, safety and ethical issues raised by living technology.