Céline Cleij participates in cool Science Show for kids

BaSyC PhD Céline Cleij participates in a cool Science show for kids, the ‘Hoe? Zo! Show’. This show is a science communication project for 9-11 year old children. The project teaches children basic scientific skills and fosters their natural curiosity.

Looking back on BaSyC PhD research

Lucia Baldauf, Maria Tsanai and Michele Partipilo all graduated from university in the past months and became a doctor. They now look back on their doctoral research and on their writing process and take us along in this article.

NWO-XL grant for Gijs Wuite and David Dulin

BaSyC PI’s Gijs Wuite and David Dulin from VU Amsterdam have been awarded a NWO-XL grant for their research proposal with the title ‘Know your enemy: deciphering coronavirus biochemical cycles from RNA synthesis to assembly.’

(photos: VU Amsterdam)

Position paper published and new podcast

The Rathenau Instituut and Radboud University published a position paper with the title ‘Society and synthetic cells - A position paper by the Future Panel on Synthetic Life' that summarizes 2 years of joint effort within the Future Panel, expressed in shared insights, key challenges and recommendations on how synthetic cells may contribute to a fair and sustainable future.

(image: Rathenau Instituut)

Read more about the position paper and the new podcast

BaSyC Seminars in the Build-a-Cell seminar series

BaSyC starts 2022 with new online seminars in the Build-a-Cell seminar series. Join us or watch the recordings!

The Synthetic Cell: a new frontier in science and technology

Can we build a living cell from lifeless components? ...and in doing so, understand how life works?

With this initiative we aim to address one of the grand scientific challenges of this century: building a synthetic cell from its molecular building blocks.

(Image: Graham Johnson)

Building a synthetic cell is one of the grand scientific and intellectual challenges of the 21st century. While we have extensive knowledge about the molecular building blocks that form the basis of modern life, we currently do not understand how these building blocks collectively operate to define life. With BaSyC we propose to build a synthetic cell from the bottom-up, which arguably is the most fundamental approach towards elucidating the cell’s intricate working and basic life-defining principles. Truly understanding cellular life will bring huge intellectual, scientific, and technological rewards. At the same time, it will raise fascinating philosophical and ethical questions about how society may cope with new opportunities that result from these new fundamental insights.