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).