Christoph Wagner

I joined the university in 2022, to do my PhD with Andrea, co-supervised with Nadanai Laohakunakorn. We are interested in the ability of cells to self-regenerate. To study this, we run cell-free transcription-translation (TXTL) experiments in a microfluidics chip, wherein a gene expression machinery produces its own proteins. The gathered data is then used to generate a model of TXTL self-regeneration.

Understanding and controlling the ability of a TXTL system to self-regenerate would mark a milestone on the path towards synthetic cells, which to me is the holy grail of synthetic biology. Everything from basic science to industry would benefit greatly from achieving to build fully synthetic cells. It's just a bummer, how very complicated that is...

Aside my PhD, I like to spend my time dancing traditional Scottish dances, writing science communication articles on my blog and sometimes running around in circles.