M.S in synthetic organic chemistry, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland, 2008
Ph.D. in biophysics, University Roma Tre, Rome, Italy, 2013
We are working on building synthetic minimal cells, and using those cells as programmable bioreactors for basic research, biomanufacturing and medicine.
We use synthetic minimal cells to mimic natural biology, and to build new functionalities from biochemical parts. We study the origin and early evolution of life, and study elements of complex modern cells. We also use synthetic cell technologies to make tools for metabolic engineering, drug development and biosensing.
We use techniques of cell-free protein expression, liposome encapsulation and RNA engineering, combining existing synthetic biology tools into new synthetic cell functionalities.
Specifically, we focus on using synthetic cells to study biological systems that are too complex to study via in vitro experiments, but too hard to investigate in complex live cell. This insludes building programmable evolution platform for investigaitng and modifying complex biomolecules, as described in this proposal.