Engineering Life: Unifying concepts from system chemistry, biophysics and theoretical physics

Goals of workshop

Christoph Weber, Job Boekhoven, Kerstin Göpfrich

Creating links between physics and chemistry to reconstruct the Origins of Life

Dieter Braun

LUNCH

Introduction: The idea of group discussions and perspective writing

Group discussion: What is the goal of engineering life?

Coffee Break

Selected short talk - "Coacervate protocells formed by native chemical ligation"

Annemiek Slootbeek

Selected short talk - "Cycles of (de)hydration far away from equilibrium catalyses chemical processes"

Ivar Haugerud

Selected short talk - "Chirality transfer from a 3D macro shape to the molecular level through asymmetric secondary flows"

Alessandro Sorrenti

Social Event: Bavarian Brotzeit

From self-organization to self-division

Petra Schwille

Group Discussion: Life is functional evolution. But how to define & measure function?

LUNCH

Selected short talk - "Ghost in the cell: artificial cells via enzyme-mediated polymer synthesis and self-assembly"

Andrea Belluati

Belluati_Slides.pdf

Selected short talk - "Linking molecular-scale to mesoscale dynamics in biomolecular condensates"

Nicola Galvanetto

Selected short talk - "Toward building an artificial nucleus"

Eva Bertosin

Coffee Break

Collective intelligence - from bugs to bots

L Mahadevan

Group Discussion: Engineered biotectonics - from cells to ecosystems

Molecular information processing in chemical reaction networks

Wilhelm Huck

Group Discussion

LUNCH

Selected short talk - "Systems chemistry of aminoacyl phosphates: Spontaneous and selective peptide oligomerisation in water driven by phase changes."

Kun Dai

Dai_Abstract.pdf

Selected short talk - "Heat flows purify >50 building blocks of life and boost their reactivity"

Thomas Matreux

Selected short talk - "Reciprocal Coupling in Chemically Fueled Assembly: A ReactionCycle Regulates Self-Assembly and Vice Versa"

Brigitte Kriebisch

Coffee Break

General Group discussion: Should synthetic cells have synthetic hardware?

General Group discussion: Joint perspective writing

Physics of Active Emulsions

Frank Jülicher

Group Discussion: How to use non-equilibrium physics to create life-like behaviors?

LUNCH

Selected short talk - "Ordered structures from liquid-liquid phase separation by supramolecular polymerizations"

Hailin Fu

Selected short talk - "Lesion-Induced DNA Amplification as a Model System for Autonomous Nucleotide Self-Replication"

Juli Gibbs

Selected short talk - "A DNA segregation module for synthetic cells"

Mai Tran

Coffee Break

An RNA world of possibilities: the satellite, the robot and the replicase

Ebbe Sloth Andersen

Group Discussion: “How do we design RNA systems that sense, compute, and act? And how do we make them replicate, adapt, and evolve.”

Hike with short talks and lunch at mountain hut

Bridging the RNA and lipid worlds: unexpected roles for lipids in RNA regulation

James Saenz

Group discussion: How do we program heritable organization into synthetic life?

LUNCH

Selected short talk - "Key features in the design and fabrication of living robots"

Maria Guix

Information processing in simple organisms: A case study

Karen Alim

Selected short talk - "Quasi-Laminar Active Nematic Flows Under Confinement"

Olga Bantysh

Coffee Break

Communicating Active Matter

Erwin Frey

Group discussion: Can theory contribute to the field of soft robotics, and what is soft robotics anyway?

Social Event

Cell-free protein synthesis: the engine of synthetic cells?

Nadanai Lauhakunakorn

Laohakunakorn_Slides.pdf

Group Discussion: How should we build and sustain self-regenerating systems?

LUNCH

Selected short talk - "Phase-separated compartments as biochemical reactors"

Sudarshana Laha

Selected short talk - "DNA origami and DNA droplet components for synthetic cells"

Shelley Wickham

Selected short talk - "Influence of the extracellular domain size on the dynamic behavior of membrane proteins"

Cenk Gurdap

Coffee Break

General Group discussion: Open questions on perspective writing

How dynamic molecular networks can accumulate life-like properties

Sijbren Otto

Group discussion: How to tame chemistry?

LUNCH

Selected short talk - "Template-based information transfer in chemically fueled dynamic combinatorial libraries"

Christine Kriebisch

Selected short talk - "Reaction-Directed Assembly: Controlling Changes of Membrane Topology by Reaction Cycles"

Gregor Ibbeken

Selected short talk -“TBD”

Alexander Bergmann

Coffee Break

Spatial proximity effects for engineering life

Ulrich Gerland

Group discussion: How can we exploit spatial arrangement for engineering life?

A lesson from early cells

Claudia Bonfio

Group Discussion: Compartmentalisation: natural vs. artificial building blocks

LUNCH

Selected short talk - "Exploring the role of class I myosins in plasma membrane organization using an in vitro reconstitution approach"

Bhagyashri Mahajan

Selected short talk - "The dynamics of phase separation and wetting in cell-free expression system"

Shuzo Kato

Selected short talk - "Bottom-up building a self-regenerating microfluidic biochemical constructor"

Pao-Wan Lee

Coffee Break

Life but not alive: bioengineering with synthetic cells

Kate Adamala

Group discussion: How can we build an interoperable synthetic cell systems?

Closing remarks

Christoph Weber, Job Boekhoven, Kerstin Göpfrich