ERC Consolidator Grant · 2023
Synthetic Life from the bottom up
Life is a mystery, with questions about how it emerged and if it exists elsewhere. Synthetic life can bring us closer to answers to these millennia-old questions. It is also extremely powerful to evolve new materials and catalysts, similar to directed evolution with bacteria. It begs the question, can we synthesize life? SynLife aims to synthesize life from man-made molecules following NASA’s definition:Life is a self-sustaining system capable of Darwinian evolution. Chemically fueled droplets will be the self-sustaining compartments. These self-dividing droplets compete for fuel (i.e., food) to thrive and will decay without fuel. We will develop self-replicating molecules that can mutate…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.