4.8 Synthetic cells as a multipurpose platform
The above rapidly advancing areas of yeast research and synthetic
biology are both a necessary step towards the building of a fully
synthetic cell (Figure 5), and also a model of international consortium
collaboration geared towards the achievement of moonshot ‘learning by
building’ life sciences goals (Frischmon et al., 2021). The
SynCell2020/21 conference is a good example of the nascent synthetic
cell community preparing for a multi-decade research program that will
require international collaborative links spanning the globe.
SynCell2023 in Minneapolis will continue to advance this agenda bringing
together the core organisations that have developed this vision: the Max
Planck Institute of Medical Research, Delft University of Technology,
the University of Minnesota and the University of New Mexico.
Fundamental research in yeast is central to setting the boundaries of
what is known about cellular life and what can be imagined about its
future potential in fully synthetic systems (Stano, 2021, 2022). In this
context, technologies and developments derived from advances in minimal
genomes, neochromosomes and synthetic yeast genomes encompassing global
collaborative efforts will be shared with these ‘bigger picture’
projects and ultimately contribute to a wider consortium focusing on a
model-agnostic platform.
The visions of developing synthetic cells includes concepts such aspocket factories , but the core element of the project is abottom-up development and integration of complete cellular
function with near-complete understanding and predictable outcomes. This
contrasts with the current top-down engineering protocols for
cellular and free-cell based biodesign. The catch, of course, is that
even bottom-up research focusing on the fundamentals of life is
necessarily bounded by contemporary understandings of how the mechanisms
of life interact and achieve objective-directed functionality. The field
of chemical-based artificial intelligence is one example of how this
SynCell research can lead to novel lines of inquiry (Gentili and Stano,
2022).