Descripción del proyecto
Crear vida sintética a partir de moléculas artificiales
La vida es un misterio, y la vida sintética podría aportar información sobre sus orígenes y su existencia en otros lugares. Además, puede facilitar la creación de nuevos materiales y catalizadores. ¿Podemos sintetizar la vida? El equipo del proyecto SynLife, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, trata de responder a esta pregunta sintetizando vida a partir de moléculas artificiales, mediante gotitas alimentadas químicamente como compartimentos autosuficientes. El equipo del proyecto pretende desarrollar moléculas autorreplicantes capaces de mutar y dividirse dentro de estas gotas, adquiriendo así una identidad. Si tiene éxito, esta iniciativa creará un sistema sintético capaz de evolucionar según el modelo darwiniano, lo cual supondrá un avance significativo en nuestra comprensión de la vida. Además, los resultados tendrán ramificaciones para la comunidad biofísica y revolucionarán el diseño de materiales al incorporar la evolución darwiniana como herramienta de fabricación.
Objetivo
Life is a mystery, with questions about how it emerged and if it exists elsewhere. Synthetic life can bring us closer to answers to these millennia-old questions. It is also extremely powerful to evolve new materials and catalysts, similar to directed evolution with bacteria. It begs the question, can we synthesize life?
SynLife aims to synthesize life from man-made molecules following NASA’s definition:Life is a self-sustaining system capable of Darwinian evolution.
Chemically fueled droplets will be the self-sustaining compartments. These self-dividing droplets compete for fuel (i.e. food) to thrive and will decay without fuel. We will develop self-replicating molecules that can mutate and partition inside of these droplets, so the droplets obtain an identity. For example, a population of droplets with replicator A differs from a population with replicator B. Moreover, these replicators affect the droplet’s phenotype, for example, by helping division or by offering longevity. To date, the combination of self-sustaining droplets and replicators has never been achieved.
Finally, populations of droplets compete with each other. In fueling-starvation experiments, it is expected that, from time to time, a droplet mutates into a better-suited one and passes this information on to the next generation. If we reach this ambitious goal, we have produced a synthetic system capable of Darwinian evolution.
The results will mark a massive step forwards in our understanding of life. It also sheds new light on the molecular mechanisms that may have played a role in the origin of life. It will have implications for the biophysics community, too, as our findings help understand how additives to droplets affect their properties, just like in membraneless organelles.
But, most excitingly, SynLife will change how we think of material design by introducing Darwinian evolution as a manufacturing tool.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitución de acogida
80333 Muenchen
Alemania