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ERC Synergy Grants aim to support ambitious research projects that cannot be carried out by a single research team. This year, the European Research Council awarded 57 collaborative projects, including two collaborations between members of the SynCellEU community. On the one hand, Bert Poolman and Petra Schwille plan to elucidate crucial biological mechanisms by building minimal cell-like systems capable of converting metabolic energy and dividing autonomously. On the other hand, Dieter Braun and Hannes Mutschler are determined to trace the Origin of life on Earth from single nucleotides, amino acids and lipids in rock-based protocell generators.

The MetaDivide project: Metabolism-driven division of minimal cell-like systems

Researchers:

• Bert Poolman
  Full Professor in Biochemistry and Director of the Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute, the Netherlands
  Expertise: membrane biochemistry, cell bioenergetics, metabolism. Bert and his team’s research includes investigating the transport mechanisms of small molecules across biological and synthetic membranes and the construction of self-sustaining life-like systems.
• Petra Schwille
  Director and Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Germany
  Expertise: biophysics of membrane systems and cell division

Bert Poolman and Petra Schwille have been actively involved in bottom-up synthetic biology for many years, both at European and national level: Petra in Germany with MaxSynBio and Bert in the Netherlands, first with the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, then with the BaSyC programme and now with the EVOLF programme.

However, although they have known each other for at least two decades and have published together (e.g. Kahya et al. 2003), they have not yet collaborated in a major way. The ERC Synergy Grant offers them the opportunity to join forces on an ambitious subject that requires the combined expertise of Bert in biochemistry and membrane metabolism and Petra in the biophysics of membrane systems and cell division.

A project to understand crucial biological mechanisms

Certain mechanisms in living cells are often masked by their molecular complexity. Bert and Petra’s awarded project aims to better understand some of the most crucial biological mechanisms by reproducing them in minimal cell-like systems. Part of this project complements the ambitions of the Dutch EVOLF scientific programme.

“We are eager to start assembling from the bottom up synthetic vesicles capable of converting metabolic energy, ensuring physicochemical homeostasis and autonomous cell division. They will harbour a newly designed minimal biochemical network for sustainable energy production, as well as active functional machineries to self-organise in space and time and produce the forces for self-division,” explained Bert Poolman.

The BubbleLife project: From RNA-peptide coevolution to cellular life at heated air bubbles

Researchers:

• Dieter Braun
  Professor of Systems Biophysics at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany, member of CeNS, the ORIGINS Excellence Cluster, and spokesperson for the Molecular evolution in prebiotic environments CRC (Collaborative Research Center)
  Expertise: biophysics, thermophoresis, Nano Temper, non-equilibrium microfluidics. His research investigates the molecular foundations of the origin of life.
• Hannes Mutschler
  Professor at the TU Dortmund University, Germany
  Expertise: cell-free biology and RNA catalysis

Since their first meeting in 2015, Dieter Braun and Hannes Mutschler have collaborated on numerous occasions. They have combined their complementary expertise on various subjects such as the replication of RNA with ribozymes* (Salditt et al. 2023), the autonomous generation of ribozyme-friendly salt compositions in heated rock pores (Matreux et al. 2021), and the co-emergence of central reactions for life at air-water interfaces (Morasch et al. 2019).

These publications converged on the idea that early RNA formation and replication occurred during RNA accumulation at heated air-water interfaces. Dieter and Hannes also realised that heated air bubbles could support other crucial reactions in the early development of life, including vesicle formation and even “modern” transcription and translation processes.

Find the conditions on the young Earth that enabled molecules to form the precursors of organic life.

Thanks to the ERC Synergy Grant, the duo will be able to test their hypotheses experimentally and shed some light on the initial conditions on the young Earth – or rocky planets – for molecules to form the precursors of organic life and herald the start of biological evolution from RNA and peptides.

“We are retracing the path, from the Darwinian evolution of RNA and peptides to the origin of the first cells,” explained Dieter Braun.

The BubbleLife project aims to synthetically produce ‘protocell generators’ that feed and encapsulate both primitive RNA replicators and modern systems of transcription and translation.

Further information and references:

• Press release: ERC Synergy Grants for 57 teams tackling major scientific challenges
• Press release from TU Dortmund University: How Life Originated from Heated Gas Bubbles
• Press release from LMU Munich: ERC Synergy Grant to CeNS member Dieter Braun
• CRC 235 Emergence of Life

*A ribozyme is a ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecule with the ability to catalyze a biochemical reaction, a function more commonly carried out by proteins. Source