Kate, Aaron, Joe, Tanner, Judee and Wakana participated in 2019 Breakthrough Discuss meeting.
Theodore Christoforidis
Contact: christot@umn.edu
Postdoc, expert in microfluidics.
Orion Venero
Orion joined the Adamala lab in early 2019; since then, they have focused on the development of tools for synthetic cell engineering, rational RNA design, and using those synthetic biology techniques to elucidate viroid and plastid evolution. Orion joined the BMBB department as a PhD student in 2022.
Judee Sharon
Judee received her B.S. in Microbial Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014. Although she did do research in her undergraduate years, she didn’t find her true interest in environmental microbiology and its applications until she began researching at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and start-up companies like Pivot Bio and Wild Earth. In 2018, she made the move to the University of Minnesota’s graduate program in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics where she joined the Adamala-Engelhart Lab. She is interested in furthering the functionality of synthetic cells for use in environmental biotechnology applications. Likewise, she would like to use synthetic cell mechanisms to consider (or reconsider) the origins of life on Earth or potentially in extraterrestrial systems. When she’s not in lab, she likes to read, watch The Office, backpack, and drink beer.
Contact: sharo112@umn.edu
New publication
Evolthon: A community endeavor to evolve lab evolution;
Sivan Kaminski Strauss, (…) Katarzyna P. Adamala, (…), Orna Dahan, Yitzhak Pilpel;
Plos Biology, doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000182;
local copy
publisher website link
Sivan Kaminski Strauss, (…) Katarzyna P. Adamala, (…), Orna Dahan, Yitzhak Pilpel;
Plos Biology, doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000182;
local copy
publisher website link
Wakana Sato
Wakana received her B.S. in Agriculture at Hokkaido University, Japan in 2018. She began her research career as an undergraduate under Dr.Takasuka, studying biomass-degrading enzymes, and Dr. Kato, studying the discovery of bioactive natural compounds.
In 2018, Wakana started graduate school at the University of Minnesota, and joined Dr. Kate Adamala’s lab. She is interested in enzyme engineering for natural product synthesis and gene-based tool development for biocomputer.
Contact: sato0055@umn.edu
Build-a-Cell Workshop #4
learning
Learning resources
The HTGAA course is based on the classic Fab-Lab “Hot to Make Almost Anything” fabrication class.
BioAcademy is the best resource to learn basisc of bioengineering, including specific applications of most cutting edge techniques. We run a synthetic cell module, including overwiew of the field of synthetic life and examples of synthetic cell based tools for biological engineering.
Excellent resource for beginning and advanced DIY biological engineers, biospaces and self-taught biohackers, as well as interesting supplement for anyone studying basics of modern biological engineering.
buildacell
Build-a-Cell
Build-a-Cell is an international community of scientists and policymakers working on building synthetic cells. We facilitate collaborations between groups in different areas of synthetic cell research, we engage with scientists in other disciplines to promote use of synthetic cell tools, and we provide information for the general public.
Our lab participated in every one of the bi-annual Build-a-Cell workshops, and we are actively pursuing collaborations with many Build-a-Cell members.
Kate Adamala is the co-founder and leader of Build-a-Cell.
STAT magazine published nice overview of efforts to build artificial life, From chemicals to life: Scientists try to build cells from scratch.
Details, including list of member labs, working groups, workshops and all resources can be found at www.buildacell.org.
DIY Bio
The HTGAA course is based on the classic Fab-Lab “Hot to Make Almost Anything” fabrication class.
BioAcademy is the best resource to learn basisc of bioengineering, including specific applications of most cutting edge techniques. We run a synthetic cell module, including overwiew of the field of synthetic life and examples of synthetic cell based tools for biological engineering.
Excellent resource for beginning and advanced DIY biological engineers, biospaces and self-taught biohackers, as well as interesting supplement for anyone studying basics of modern biological engineering.
Astrobiology
Astrobiology
Astrobiology is studying past, present and future of the life on the Universe. Synthetic cells are the perfect tool to answer many of the questions typically asked by astrobiologists, including engineering synthetic cells to resemble earliest terrestrial life forms for studying of the origins of life on Earth, engineering synthetic cell systems to explore possibilities of biochemistries yielding life on other planets, and exploring possible future evolution scenarios for various life forms. Using synthetic cells we can ask many questions about “weird life” events and alternative life forms, questions that would be nearly impossible to answer studying modern, complex terrestrial cells.
Our work is driven by the question of what is the multidimensional niche space for life, and what are the molecular mechanisms of these boundary physicochemical conditions of life? This leads naturally to the questions of how does terrestrial life responds to changes at those boundary conditions, and can synthetic biology be used to expand these? We aim at defining comprehensive matrix describing mechanisms in which environment restricts basic processes of biology, and developing framework for studying and designing living systems around those limitations.
Exploring the Informational Transitions Bridging Inorganic Chemistry and Minimal Life
Understanding what separates life from non-life is critical to solving some of the great outstanding questions in science, such as how life first emerged and how we might unambiguously detect life on other worlds. The transition from non-living to living matter has been notoriously difficult to quantify, limiting our ability to develop the necessary theory for understanding life or its universal properties. One of the most significant challenges is the complexity of the examples of life available to study, which represent the product of more than 3.5 billion years of evolution. Systems representing the intermediate stages of complexity between simple chemistry and modern biology are only now becoming accessible to study in the lab with advances in systems chemistry and minimal synthetic life, respectively. These have not yet been connected to explore the uncharacterized landscape between simple chemical systems and the much more complex biochemical architectures characteristic of life today. Our project is an unprecedented opportunity to systematically study the full pathway from non-life to life through a synthesis of bottom-up chemistry, top-down minimal biology and fundamental theory. We aim to build very simple systems from chemical and biological parts, and by studying varying stages of programmed complexity and autonomy, systematically evaluate the transitions in information through which these become more life-like, self-referential entities.
Thank you for support: Templeton Foundation.
This work is done in collaboration with Sara Walker, Paul Davies and Lee Cronin.