Wednesday, 26 February 2025 11:00am – 12:00pm

This seminar will be delivered in Chemistry Lecture Theatre 4

Speaker: Professor Wilhelm T. S. Huck

Host: Dr Mark White

Title: Enzymatic reaction networks for synthetic cells

Abstract: All known lifeforms consist of cells, and all cells consist of molecules. How does a living cell emerge from lifeless molecules? Can we build a living cell from molecules in the laboratory? How many components would this take and how should they be wired? Although modern genome sequencing and omics technologies are able to read entire genomes as well as the proteins that they encode, we still do not know how these parts fit together in a functionally coherent manner to establish a living cell.

Enzymatic reaction networks will play a crucial part of any synthetic cells, controlling gene expression levels, metabolism, or cell division. However, predicting and controlling the dynamics of enzymatic reaction networks is extremely challenging. In this lecture, I will discuss a range of methods to extract kinetic information from enzymatic reaction networks and present machine-learning enhanced methods for tuning their desired outputs.

Recent relevant publications:

1. Jakštaitė et al. Active learning maps the emergent dynamics of enzymatic reaction networks https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2024-vxfkz.
2. Morini et al. Leveraging Active Learning to Establish Efficient In Vitro Transcription and Translation from Bacterial Chromosomal DNA, ACS Omega, 2024, 9, 19227-19235
3. Duez et al. Quantitative Online Monitoring of an Immobilized Enzymatic Network by Ion Mobility–Mass Spectrometry, Am. Chem. Soc. 2024, 146, 20778-20787.
4. van Sluijs et al. Iterative design of training data to control intricate enzymatic reaction networks, Nature Comms. 2024, 15, 1602.
5. Sakai et al. Cell-Free Expression System Derived from a Near-Minimal Synthetic Bacterium, ACS Synth. Biol. 2023, 12, 1616-1623.
6. van Sluijs et al. A microfluidic optimal experimental design platform for forward design of cell-free genetic networks, Nature Comms. 2022, 13, 3626.

Bio
Prof. Dr. Wilhelm T. S. Huck received his PhD in 1997 from the University of Twente. After postdoctoral research with George Whitesides at Harvard University, he took up a position in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, where he was promoted to Reader (2003) and Full Professor of Macromolecular Chemistry (2007). In 2010 he moved to the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, to take up a position as Professor of Physical Organic Chemistry. His research interests center around understanding life as a set of complex chemical reactions and the application of AI and ML in chemistry. He is Co-PI on a SUMMIT grant ‘Evolving life from non-life’ (EVOLF) and lead PI on a 97M Euro Dutch National Growth Fund initiative on AI and chemistry (BigChemistry). He received the Spinoza Prize (2016), a VICI award (2011) and two ERC Advanced Grants (2010 & 2019). Prof. Huck is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. His group uses microfluidics, and, increasingly, AI and robotics, to study chemical reaction networks, to construct minimal synthetic cells, and to develop self-driving modules for formulating functional complex mixtures.