POC department outing

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Last Friday we had Physical Organic Chemistry (POC) department outing! We started off in the morning with a Lab Safety and Organisational meeting, which was followed up by lunch and a graffiti workshop! Everyone was very enthusiastic as it was the first time holding a spray paint can for most of us. We created some amazing lab-life and nature inspired art that you can see on our X (Twitter) and Instagram profiles (@Huckgroup)! ✨

6th CORENET general Assembly

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On 30 October 2025 the 6th CORENET general Assembly took place. This time kindly hosted in Copenhagen by our partners from the University of Southern Denmark. It was a great opportunity to catch up with all our collaborators and see everyone’s progress towards creating chemical reservoir computers. After a day filled with science, we enjoyed a boat tour through the canals of Copenhagen, followed by wonderful dinner at Paté Paté.

Roeland Nolte Memorial Symposium

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On October 14-15, we attended a symposium dedicated to the memory of the late Prof. Roeland Nolte, organized by Wilhelm Huck, Hans Elemans, Bert Meijer, and Ben Feringa. Many professors, former PhD students, and family members gathered to share heartfelt memories, along with engaging research talks.

Photo credit: Nikita Ivanov

Roeland Nolte Memorial Symposium on October 14-15 in Nijmegen

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The Memorial Symposium dedicated to Professor Roeland Nolte will take place on October 14-15 in Nijmegen.

Please register if you plan to attend here.

Venue: Aula Radboud University, Comeniuslaan 2, 6525 HP Nijmegen

Organisers: Wilhelm Huck, Hans Elemans, Bert Meijer & Ben Feringa

GRS & GRC conferences 2024

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From June 15-16, the Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on Systems Chemistry took place, followed by the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) from June 16-21 at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine, United States. Our PhD students Anna, Souvik, and Thijs and Mathijs, a junior group leader in Robot Lab participated in this conference. Thijs presented his research on the Formose reservoir computer (recently accepted in Nature!) and all of them showcased their research posters throughout the event. Wilhelm also participated as a discussion leader for the conference theme ‘Prebiotic Chemistry.’ Overall, the conference featured a diverse range of speakers presenting exciting and novel research topics, including chemical reaction networks, nucleic acid chemistry, and systems exhibiting emergent functions.

Publication: Chemical reservoir computation in a self-organizing reaction network

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Since the dawn of computer science, researchers have speculated about replacing electronics with physical and biological systems for computation. With the recent creation of large AI models and the associated rising energy- and resource-costs, the development of these alternative forms of computation have never been more relevant. In our new paper, now published in Nature, we report on the discovery and implementation of a chemical reservoir computer based on the prebiotic formose reaction. We investigated how this system processes information and demonstrated how it can perform complex computations similar to neural networks. Our work shows the intrinsic computational power of chemical networks and paves the way for a new kind of computer based on chemistry instead of electronics.

Congratulations to Mathieu Baltussen, Thijs de Jong, Quentin Duez, William Robinson and Wilhelm Huck! 🥳🎊

You can read the paper online now here.

Dr. Fernández Regueiro

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On 14 June, 2024, Cristina Lía Fernández Regueiro successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Modular Enzymatic Networks: Towards Enzymatic Information Processing”. Lía became #27 Dr. in the Huck group!

Big congratulations, Lía!! You deserved it! All the best to your future career! 🥳🎉

Publication: ARTseq-FISH – Simultaneous Spatial Profiling of mRNAs and Proteins at the Same Resolution

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In a new publication we developed a multiplexed spatial profiling method, ARTseq-FISH. This method enables the simultaneous detection and quantitation of mRNA, protein and phosphoprotein levels in individual cells at the same resolution. Now published in Nature Communications!

Congratulations to Xinyu, Bob and all co-authors!

You can read the paper here.

NWO Summit grant for Wilhelm Huck and EVOLF programme

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Amazing news! Prof. Wilhelm Huck together with other 6 co-applicants were rewarded a grant for a new EVOLF consortium! In this programme researchers will use non-living biomolecules to build a living synthetic cell. 10 year funding for EVOLF will also involve artificial intelligence (AI) which will help to understand the evolution of a living cell.

Big congratulations to Wilhelm and and the whole consortium! 🥳🎈

More information here and here.

Publication: Using active learning to establish efficient in vitro gene expression from chromosomes

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In order to build a synthetic cell, it is crucial to know how to access the genetic information carried in large DNA molecules. In this work, we used rational analysis and an active learning tool to explore a broad parameter space and to adapt in vitro gene expression to E. coli’s chromosomes, discovering that these molecules can be expressed with a surprisingly high efficiency. We hope that this work will move the SynCell community one step further. Published now in ACS Omega!

Congratulations to Leonardo and all co-authors!! 🎉🥳

You can read the paper here.