NWO Summit grant for Wilhelm Huck and EVOLF programme

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

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.

Review: Exploring Emergent Properties in Enzymatic Reaction Networks

New review article has just been published in ACS Chemical Reviews! 🎈🎊

Here we explore exciting research involving enzymatic reaction networks, where we discuss the progress to date and the challenges ahead.

You can read it here.

Congratulations to all authors: Souvik Ghosh, Mathieu Baltussen, Nikita Ivanov, Rianne Haije, Miglė Jakštaitė, Tao Zhou and Wilhelm Huck! 🎉✨

Publication: B-cell signaling in dynamic environments

Cells live in constantly changing environments. To truly understand how cells process information in their complex natural environment, it is essential to recreate such dynamic environments in the lab and study cell responses. In our work, we have studied how B-cells respond to dynamic environments by creating gradients of increasing hydrogen peroxide levels over time. This research revealed that B-cells are sensitive to the rate at which hydrogen peroxide is added! We hope this exciting result will spark more research on dynamic environments of cells.

You can read the paper here.

Congratulations to Melde, Emma, Bas, Jessie, and Wilhelm! 🎉🥳

Publication: Iterative design of training data to control intricate enzymatic reaction networks

Congratulations to Bob, Tao and co-authors, who designed training data to control enzymatic reaction networks in flow! The newest article entitled “Iterative design of training data to control intricate enzymatic reaction networks” is now out in Nature Communications! Well done!! 😎🎊🥳

You can read the paper here

Dr. van Sluijs

On 22 January, 2024, Bob van Sluijs successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled Decoding Complexity: Maximizing the Information About Partially Observed Nonlinear Networks. Bob became #26 Dr. in the Huck group!

Congratulations Dr. Bob! It’s a well deserved title and you did an amazing job! All the best to your future career! 😎🥳

Christmas Party

Right before Christmas break we had an Organic Chemistry Cluster party! This year the topic was bioluminescence! We had a lot of fun and made a POC photo!

Secret Sock Santa

It’s that time of the year again! In POC department we have an annual tradition to exchange little Sinterklaas/Christmas presents 🎅🎁. To make the choice easier, we are always gifting socks 🧦 and write a personal poem 📝. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed the time together before the winter holiday!

CORENET meeting in Madrid

On 30 November 2023, the 4th General Assembly hybrid meeting of the CORENET consortium took place at the CIAL institute in Madrid, Spain, hosted by partners from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and National Research Council of Spain (CSIC). During the meeting all partners presented their research updates, after which fruitful discussions gave new ideas for further scientific investigations and collaborations. Our group was represented by PhD students Mathieu Baltussen and Thijs de Jong, who presented the latest research about reservoir computation in chemical reaction networks.

Please click here to read more about the meeting.

Dr. Sakai

On Monday (4 December, 2023) Andrei Sakai successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Construction of a minimal synthetic cell”. Andrei became #25 Dr. in the Huck group!

Congratulations Dr. Andrei! We’re very proud of you! All the best to your future career! 😎🥳