But inside the laboratories at the University of Groningen synthetic cell development is in progress---under the direction of biochemist Bert Poolman---which, if successful, could change the landscape far beyond this Dutch storybook setting (although it’s unclear just how). Poolman and his team making a synthetic cell have recently been awarded €19 million by the Netherlands Science Foundation for their research. Bert Poolman: There is a lot of labeling going on in synthetic biology: top-down, bottom-up. Bert Poolman: We received a grant of €19 million from the Netherlands Science Foundation last summer for our synthetic cell development project. The 15 PIs [principal investigators] have already individually been working on aspects of synthetic cell development.

Source: Huffington Post December 10, 2017 06:22 UTC