Synthetic Biology seminars

David Baker presents recent advances in designing proteins for functions that natural evolution has not been required to solve. The approach begins with a desired structure or activity and uses deep learning to propose amino acid sequences expected to realise it. The resulting designs are translated into synthetic genes, produced as proteins and tested experimentally. The lecture connects computational design with laboratory characterisation, explaining how the combination can create new molecular functions relevant to medicine, technology and sustainability. Its focus is the construction and evaluation of proteins from scratch, extending the protein-design research recognised by the 2024 chemistry prize.

A key question for basic biology and regenerative medicine concerns the way in which evolution exploits physics toward adaptive form and function. While genomes specify the molecular hardware of cells, what algorithms enable cellular collectives to reliably build specific, complex, target morphologies? Our lab studies the way in which all cells, not just neurons, communicate as electrical networks that enable scaling of single-cell properties into collective intelligences that solve problems in anatomical feature space. By learning to read, interpret, and write bioelectrical information in vivo, we have identified some novel controls of growth and form that enable incredible plasticity and robustness in anatomical homeostasis. In this talk, I will describe the fundamental knowledge gaps with respect to anatomical plasticity and pattern control beyond emergence, and discuss our efforts to understand large-scale morphological control circuits. I will show examples in embryogenesis, regeneration, cancer, and synthetic living machines. I will also discuss the implications of this work for not only regenerative medicine, but also for fundamental understanding of the origin of bodyplans and the relationship between genomes and functional anatomy.

Gerald Joyce explores attempts to reconstruct features of RNA-based life in the laboratory. Under the RNA world hypothesis, early organisms used RNA to store information and catalyze replication before the emergence of DNA genomes. Directed evolution has produced RNA enzymes that copy diverse templates, synthesize structured and catalytic RNAs, and amplify short templates in an RNA-catalyzed analogue of the polymerase chain reaction. A variant can make DNA from an RNA template, suggesting a possible route between RNA and DNA genomes. Joyce also describes cross-chiral enzymes that synthesize RNA of opposite handedness and can assemble their own enantiomers from fragments. The lecture examines these complementary approaches to replicating functional RNA, their relevance to the origins of life, and potential diagnostic and clinical applications.