RCN Build-a-Cell: An Open Community Considering & Advancing the Construction of Synthetic Cells

细胞是构成活的有机体的基本“构件”。然而，我们不知道细胞最初是如何形成的。我们也不知道组成任何自然细胞的所有分子都有什么作用。最后，我们仍然不能自己把分子组装成一个新的、合成的细胞。解决上述问题和挑战需要进行大量的协作和合作。构建细胞研究协作网络将促进对各种合成细胞的理解和工程设计的研究。生物技术的未来是实现完全理解的、不分血统的有机体，从单个细胞开始。构建细胞网络将整合现有的关于生物系统各方面工程的知识，最终目标是促进从非生命成分构建活细胞。学习如何从一组广为人知的部分中设计出活细胞，将使我们对生命的理解发生飞跃，并将产生对科学界和社会有益的新技术。从零开始构建活细胞所需的技能和工具将有助于研究现有的生物学，而我们对生命的理解将通过从已知的、已定义的部分设计生命系统的能力而显著提高。设计一个活的细胞将需要拥有各种不同技能和能力的团队之间的密切合作。这一网络为各个实验室之间的协作提供了一个正式的结构，弥合了地理和学科上的分歧。该网络每年将举办两次研讨会，以便成员之间进行密集的互动，创造新的研究合作，并交流想法和未发表的成果。我们将促进与来自其他领域的研究人员的会议，他们可以使用合成细胞社区开发的技术，也可以为我们提供来自他们自己领域的工具。这将通过在生物、生物化学和生物工程会议期间组织教程和研讨会来实现。该网络的其他活动将包括通过科普文章、社交媒体存在和为少数族裔学生组织和参加的会议向普通公众进行宣传。网络成员的工作组将创建开放接入教程，包括用于使用各种合成细胞相关技术的群众测试协议。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Cells are the fundamental "building blocks" that make up living organisms. However, we don't know exactly how cells were formed in the first place. We also don't know what all the molecules that make up any natural cell do. Finally, we still can't put molecules together ourselves to make a new, synthetic, cell. Addressing the questions and challenges posed above requires significant collaboration and cooperation. The Build-a-Cell Research Collaboration Network will facilitate studies on understanding and engineering a diverse range of synthetic cells. The future of biotechnology is in realizing fully-understood, lineage-agnostic organisms, beginning with a single cell. The Build-a-Cell network will integrate existing knowledge about engineering various aspects of biological systems, with the ultimate goal of facilitating construction of living cell from non-living components. Learning how to engineer a living cell from a set of well-understood parts will provide a leap in our understanding of life, and it will result in novel technologies beneficial for the scientific community and society. The skills and tools necessary to build a living cell from scratch will be useful in studying existing biology, while our understanding of life will be significantly improved by the ability to engineer living systems from known, defined parts. Engineering a live cell will require close collaboration between teams with a wide array of different skill sets and capabilities. This network provides a formalized structure for collaboration between individual labs, bridging geographical and disciplinary divides. The network will host two workshops a year, to allow for intensive interactions between members, creation of new research collaborations, and exchange of ideas and unpublished results. We will facilitate meetings with researchers from other fields, who could either use technologies developed by the synthetic cell community, or provide us with tools from their own fields. This will be done by organizing tutorials and workshops during biology, biochemistry and bioengineering meetings. Other activities of the network will include outreach to the general public via popular science articles, social media presence, and outreach to meetings organized for and attended by minority students. Working groups of network members will create open access tutorials, including crowd-tested protocols for use of various synthetic cell-related technologies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.