Towards a synthetic cell: designing, testing and optimizing functional genomic modules in E. coli

This project is a sub-project within the Building a Synthetic cell (BaSyC) consortium. This consortium aims to build a synthetic cell bottom-up by combining functional modules that constitute a living cell. The project is broken down into seven work packages, divided between about 20 research groups at six Dutch universities and institutes. The work that is the topic of this thesis is one of the projects that have been/are being performed within work package 5: Towards autonomy. WP5 aims to test the functional modules designed by other work packages, combine them and work towards an autonomous synthetic cell. To do this, a genome will have to be designed that contains the genetic information for all modules. Additionally, the modules are to be tested in-vitro and in-vivo one by one, or in a combinatorial approach.