Content related with: biophysics

It is a valuable initiative to combine people operating in various scientific disciplines in Europe towards an ambitious yet achievable goal.

The Synthetic Cell initiative tackles one of the most fascinating questions: how can a bunch of inert molecules interact in a way that makes them come alive?

I have been following from the very beginning this initiative and fully support it. The whole of my research work can contribute to Synthetic Cell initiative

This is an important initiative that will strengthen basic research and develop an innovative approach for creating life. Thank you for your great efforts!

SynCell is a timely initiative likely to be of crucial importance in our quest to understand cellular life and also develop the next generation of soft-matter technologies for applications ranging from therapy, diagnostics and drug development to the "green synthesis" of new compounds and materials.

There are many ways to study life, and one that is particularly appealing is regarding it as self-organized active soft matter that is away from equilibrium ``just the right way’’. This proposal is of utmost fundamental importance as it provides a perfect complementary environment in which this notion can be explored and developed. A natural starting point will be to think about how we can begin to put together simple building blocks - from basic ingredients that we fully understand - that would exhibit the kind of active behaviour we find in living systems. A next important question to address is the stability of a living system made of active components, when the nonequilibrium processes that characterize life such as motility, chemical signalling, and cell division are present. The complementary studies of these different aspects, which can be harboured in such an all-encompassing European flagship initiative, can help create all the elements that are required for making living matter from the bottom-up. This initiative has my full and enthusiastic support, and I'd like to congratulate Professor Marileen Dogterom for taking the leadership of this important campaign.

Many of the greatest scientific achievements have been sparked by fundamental research. This initiative is probably as fundamental as research in the life sciences can possibly be - it concerns the very transition from chemistry into biology. And still its implications reach far into biomedicine.