Summary
Unravelling the origin of life and achieving the de-novo synthesis of life are among the grand challenges in contemporary science. Self-replicating molecules play a central role in addressing these challenges. Progress in the field of self-replication is hampered by limitations in monitoring the replication process in real-time, particularly when using low concentrations and small sample volumes (i.e. in protocell environments). Here we propose to employ, for the first time, a new optical pattern-generating combinatorial fluorescent molecular device (expertise of the Experienced Researcher) for the real-time monitoring of the dynamic evolution of self-replicating molecules (expertise of the Host Lab). The binding of the sensor to the self-replicators affects the intensity and/or position of the bands of each of the chromophores contained in the sensor at different emission channels, thus generating a unique optical fingerprint (fluorescent pattern) for each self-replicator. The method allows optical identification and tracking of self-replicators in real-time and requires only small sample volumes. The latter characteristic allows self-replication to be monitored inside cell-like compartments (coascervate droplet or bilayer vesicles), enabling, for the first time, to study replication inside such compartments. Merging replication with compartmentalization constitute an important towards developing a minimal form of life. Furthermore, compartmentalization in small volumes allows large numbers of experiments to be conducted in parallel, which would, for the first time, enable studying stochastic effects important for evolution of synthetic self-replicators.
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| Web resources: | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/896171 |
| Start date: | 01-04-2020 |
| End date: | 31-03-2022 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | 187 572,48 Euro - 187 572,00 Euro |
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Original description
Unravelling the origin of life and achieving the de-novo synthesis of life are among the grand challenges in contemporary science. Self-replicating molecules play a central role in addressing these challenges. Progress in the field of self-replication is hampered by limitations in monitoring the replication process in real-time, particularly when using low concentrations and small sample volumes (i.e. in protocell environments). Here we propose to employ, for the first time, a new optical pattern-generating combinatorial fluorescent molecular device (expertise of the Experienced Researcher) for the real-time monitoring of the dynamic evolution of self-replicating molecules (expertise of the Host Lab). The binding of the sensor to the self-replicators affects the intensity and/or position of the bands of each of the chromophores contained in the sensor at different emission channels, thus generating a unique optical fingerprint (fluorescent pattern) for each self-replicator. The method allows optical identification and tracking of self-replicators in real-time and requires only small sample volumes. The latter characteristic allows self-replication to be monitored inside cell-like compartments (coascervate droplet or bilayer vesicles), enabling, for the first time, to study replication inside such compartments. Merging replication with compartmentalization constitute an important towards developing a minimal form of life. Furthermore, compartmentalization in small volumes allows large numbers of experiments to be conducted in parallel, which would, for the first time, enable studying stochastic effects important for evolution of synthetic self-replicators.Status
CLOSEDCall topic
MSCA-IF-2019Update Date
28-04-2024
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