The tree of life (TOL) is a powerful framework to depict the evolutionary history of cellular organisms through time, from the last universal common ancestor, LUCA, to extant archaea, bacteria and eukaryotes shaping biodiversity on Earth today.
During the past decades, our perception of the TOL has fundamentally changed in part due to profound methodological advances which allowed a more...
Engineering synthetic cells from non-living components allows us to explore and reimagine cellular functions beyond what we observe in natural systems. As the capabilities of individual synthetic cells are still limited, quick and reliable transmission of signals could help to distribute tasks, just like the division of labor between cells in multicellular organisms. In this talk, I will...
