Christophe Danelon Lab

Apr 2023: Zhanar Abil, a former postdoc in the lab, was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida. Congratulations Zhanar!
Mar 2023: Clonal amplification of DNA in liposomes boosts phenotypic output from a low-copy number of genes, enabling the use of evolution as a tool for engineering synthetic cells. Read about our CADGE technology: article by Ana and Zhanar.
Mar 2023: Lab trip in Toulouse, France! Thanks to the people at Toulouse Biotechnology Institute that hosted us and contributed to the scientific program.
Mar 2023: We learned the passing away of Andreea Stan, a second year PhD student in the lab. Our thoughts go to her family and friends. We will remember Andreea as a talented and passionate young scientist. She was awarded a Casimir-NanoFront PhD position in 2021 and a Casimir PhD travel grant in 2023. Andreea made an important scientific contribution by developing a platform for the continuous evolution of a self-replicating DNA.
Jan 2023: Membrane-anchored FtsZ is not sufficient for division. See Elisa’s paper.
Nov 2022: Christophe was appointed as a Professor at Toulouse Biotechnology Institute (TBI-INSA), Toulouse, France. Lots of changes ahead, with the same ambition to build a synthetic cell.
Apr 2022: Elisa defended her PhD with cum laude, congratulations !!
Mar 2022: Marijn joined our group as a new PhD student, welcome back!
Feb 2022: Ana was awarded an EMBO Scientific Exchange Grant, congrats!
Sep 2021: Andreea joined our lab as a new PhD student!
Sep 2021: Bacterial microtubule work is now published in ACS Synthetic Biology. Congratulations Johannes and Anne!
Mar 2021: Duco defended his PhD, congratulations dr. Blanken!!
Jan 2021: Our work on the expression of 32 translation factor proteins in PURE system is published in Scientific Reports. Congratulations to Anne and the other co-authors!
Dec 2020: Goodbye and thank you, Zhanar and Wouter !! Best of luck for the future.
Aug 2020: Anne and David have left the lab for new horizons. Thank you both for your scientific contribution and for being two great team members. Best wishes.
Aug 2020: 3 papers accepted for publication this month. Congratulations to everyone involved!
Jun 2020: Johannes successfully defended his PhD, congratulations!
May 2020: Wouter joined our lab as a PhD student, welcome!
Nov 2019: Interview of Elisa about the Min article here.

Nov 2019: Our Min paper is published in Nature Communications.

Read also the paper highlight on the TU Delft News.

Oct 2019: Alicia successfully defended her PhD, Congratulations!
Oct 2019: Alicia’s work on the SN-38 drug is posted on bioRxiv.
Apr 2019: Our latest results on the PURE system are published in Phys. Biol.
Sep 2018: Zhanar Abil was awarded a LEaDing Fellowship and joined the lab as a postdoc.
June 2018: Interview of Pauline about our DNA replication article published in New Scientist.

Apr. 2018: Our study on DNA replication is published.

Self-replication of DNA by its encoded proteins in liposome-based synthetic cells
Pauline van Nies, Ilja Westerlaken, Duco Blanken, Margarita Salas, Mario Mencia and Christophe Danelon

Nat Commun. 2018 Apr 20;9(1):1583. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-03926-1. (link).

The central dogma of biology was formulated in the 1950’sand describes the flow of genetic information as a universal property of living cells. In this report, we reconstructed DNA replication, transcription and translation, the three pillars of the central dogma, inside synthetic liposome compartments. Figure legend: Fluorescence confocal image of micrometer-sized phospholipid vesicles, called liposomes. Red channel, membrane dye; Green channel, DNA dye. DNA amplification is visualized as bright green spots in the lumen of liposomes.

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