K.R.E.D. Lecture: 'Building living cells from lifeless molecules'

 

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Join us for Professor Gijsje Koenderink's K.R.E.D. Lecture

'Building living cells from lifeless molecules'

 

What is life? One way to address this longstanding question is to build synthetic living cells from lifeless components. This is the central ambition of an emergent new research field known as bottom-up synthetic biology. Our research is part of a large nation-wide effort in the Netherlands to build a synthetic cell with the basic attributes of living systems: autonomous growth, self-replication, and communication with its environment. My lab specifically focuses on the challenge of reconstituting a minimal division machinery that is capable of constricting and dividing the synthetic cell. Cell division requires a controlled cell shape change determined by an interplay between the mechanics of the cell membrane and force generation by the cytoskeleton. We explore this membrane-cytoskeleton interplay by cell-free expression of bacterial divisome proteins from a small synthetic genome encapsulated within cell‑sized giant unilamellar vesicles. Using confocal imaging, we show that it is possible to achieve membrane constriction and abscission by using simple divisome systems based on FtsZ and dynamin-A. I will furthermore show our progress towards achieving controlled cell growth by membrane fusion with small vesicles mediated by lipid-conjugated DNA (LiNA). Finally I will briefly discuss our related efforts to reconstitute mammalian cytoskeletal systems.  Altogether our findings establish a robust experimental platform for systematically probing the biophysical mechanisms of cell division and lay the foundation for engineering an autonomous divisome compatible with a synthetic cell cycle.

 

  • DATE: Friday, 10 July 2026
  • TIME: 12pm
  • VENUE: Carol Robinson Seminar Room, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Building, Sherrington Road, Oxford
  • PLEASE NOTE: Entry is strictly on presentation of a University card. Seating is limited.
About the speaker:

Professor Gijsje Koenderink is full professor in the Bionanoscience Department at TU Delft and Medical Delta Professor at the Erasmus Medical School in Rotterdam. She trained as a soft matter scientist at Utrecht University (Ph.D. 2003) and then trained as a Marie Curie postdoctoral Fellow at the VU University Amsterdam (2003–2004) and Harvard University (2004–2006). Between 2006-2019, she headed the Biological Soft Matter group at the AMOLF Institute in Amsterdam. In September 2019, she transferred her group to Delft.

The Koenderink lab is an experimental research group centered around the soft matter physics of living matter. The central aim is to understand the physical mechanisms that enable living matter (cells and tissues) to combine mechanical strength with the ability to actively generate forces and change shape. To this end, the team combines concepts and methods from soft matter physics, biophysics, synthetic biology, and mechanobiology. Through collaborations, the research also extends to food and biomedical materials and research into implications of abnormal cell/tissue mechanics for cancer metastasis, fibrosis and osteoarthritis.

Prof Koenderink has received various distinctions, including an NWO VIDI (2008), ERC Starting Grant (2013), NWO VICI (2019), the P-G. de Gennes Prize (2018), the Dresden Physics Prize (2020), APS DSOFT fellowship (2024), and elected membership of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). She is a co-recipient of the NWO-Gravitation program Basyc (2017–2027) and co-lead of the NWO-SUMMIT program EVOLF (2024–2034), both devoted to the bottom-up assembly of a minimal living cell from nonliving building blocks.

Prof Koenderink is co-director of the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Delft, a member of the advisory boards of the Institut Jacques Monod (Paris) and the Dutch synthetic biology association SynBioNL, and editorial board member for Physical Biology, Biophysical Journal, and PRX.

 

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