What excites us?
Despite immense efforts, how to build a synthetic life and what constitutes it remain an open question. However, life may not have appeared with all the required properties at once, and it probably must be an outcome of a gradual process where, starting from some elementary interactions between abiotic molecules, chemical systems could have emerged and evolved under various selection pressures.
Our lab is interested in developing evolvable chemical systems and understanding the dynamics of structured and functional RNAs in the complex environment of liquid-liquid phase-separated droplets. Exploiting biophysical, biochemical, and evolutionary approaches, we aim to address:
How can synthetic protocells with growth and division capabilities be designed?
How can elements of self-reproduction, variation, and heredity be combined to develop ‘life-like’ chemical systems?
How is RNA dynamics perturbed in the complex environment of liquid-liquid phase separation?
How can new functional RNAs be designed using evolutionary principles?
