K.R.E.D. Lecture: 'Building living cells from lifeless molecules'
Audience: Member of University - ALL Format: In Person
Friday, 10 July 2026, 12pm to 1pm
Join us for Professor Gijsje Koenderink's K.R.E.D. Lecture: 'Building living cells from lifeless molecules'. Kavli Research & Enterprise Discussions (K.R.E.D) exemplify our commitment to fostering interdisciplinary knowledge exchange and promoting cutting-edge research.
Speaker(s): Professor Gijsje Koenderink (Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Delft; Bionanoscience Department at TU Delft; Erasmus Medical School Rotterdam)
Series: K.R.E.D. Lectures
Venue:
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Building - DCHB 20-138 Seminar Room 2
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DCHB 20-138 Seminar Room 2 Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Building off South Parks Road Oxford Oxfordshire OX1 3QU United Kingdom
Department: Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery (Unit)
More info:
What is life? One way to address this longstanding question is to build synthetic living cells from lifeless components. This is the central ambition of an emergent new research field known as bottom-up synthetic biology. Our research is part of a large nation-wide effort in the Netherlands to build a synthetic cell with the basic attributes of living systems: autonomous growth, self-replication, and communication with its environment. My lab specifically focuses on the challenge of reconstituting a minimal division machinery that is capable of constricting and dividing the synthetic cell. Cell division requires a controlled cell shape change determined by an interplay between the mechanics of the cell membrane and force generation by the cytoskeleton. We explore this membrane-cytoskeleton interplay by cell-free expression of bacterial divisome proteins from a small synthetic genome encapsulated within cell sized giant unilamellar vesicles. Using confocal imaging, we show that it is possible to achieve membrane constriction and abscission by using simple divisome systems based on FtsZ and dynamin-A. I will furthermore show our progress towards achieving controlled cell growth by membrane fusion with small vesicles mediated by lipid-conjugated DNA (LiNA). Finally I will briefly discuss our related efforts to reconstitute mammalian cytoskeletal systems. Altogether our findings establish a robust experimental platform for systematically probing the biophysical mechanisms of cell division and lay the foundation for engineering an autonomous divisome compatible with a synthetic cell cycle.