The genome contains all the information necessary for cellular functions. Malfunction in its maintenance, or the accumulation of mutations, can have detrimental effects on cell viability and be the root cause of a wide range of diseases. Despite decades of research into genome fundamentals, it has not yet been possible to design and build a synthetic genome capable of driving cellular functions. What are the unknowns of genome biology, and what determines the organisation of genomes?

Our research uses synthetic biology and synthetic genomics approaches in microbial model systems, taking a 'build to understand and apply' approach to tackle fundamental questions and improve the bioeconomy. To achieve our goals, we apply a broad spectrum of molecular tools and omics technologies, as well as other advanced technologies, including laboratory automation.

We use synthetic biology tools to engineer pathways and chromosomes in microorganisms. “Build-to-understand” functional analyses are carried out to inform on fundamental processes.

Selected publications

Original Papers

de Vries ST, Köbel TS, Sanal A, Schindler D# (2024) In- & Out-Cloning: Plasmid toolboxes for scarless transcription unit and modular Golden Gate acceptor plasmid assembly. Synth Biol (Oxf). 9(1):ysae016.

Brück M, Köbel TS, Dittmar S, Ramírez Rojas AA, Georg J, Berghoff BA#, Schindler D# (2024) A library-based approach for systematic modulation of the seed region length reveals design rules for synthetic small RNAs in bacteria. iScience. 27(9):110774.

Ramming L§, Stukenberg D§, Sánchez Olmos MdC, Glatter T, Becker A, Schindler D# (2024) Rationally designed chromosome fusion does not prevent rapid growth of Vibrio natriegens. Commun Biol. 7:519.

Lindeboom TA§, Sánchez Olmos MdC§, Schulz K, Brinkmann CK, Ramírez Rojas AA, Hochrein L#, Schindler D# (2024) An optimized genotyping workflow for identifying highly SCRaMbLEd synthetic yeasts. ACS Synth Biol. 13(4):1116-1127.

Schindler D§, Walker RSK§, Jiang S, Brooks AN, Wang Y, Müller CA, Cockram C, Luo Y, García Martínez A, Schraivogel D, Mozziconacci J, Pena N, Assari M, Sánchez Olmos MdC, Zhao Y, Ballerini A, Blount BA, Cai J, Ogunlana L, Liu W, Jönnson K, Abramczyk D, Garcia-Ruiz E, Swidah R, Ellis T, Antequera F, Shen Y, Nieduszynski CA, Koszul R, Dai J, Steinmetz LM, Boeke JD, Cai Y (2023) Design, construction, and functional characterization of a tRNA neochromosome in yeast. Cell. 186(24):5237-5253.e22.

Shen Y, Gao F, Wang Y, Wang Y, Zheng J, Gong J, Zhang J, Luo Z, Schindler D, Deng Y, Ding W, Lin T, Swidah R, Zhao H, Jiang S, Zeng C, Chen S, Chen T, Wang Y, Luo Y, Mitchell L, Bader JS, Zhang G, Shen X, Wang J, Fu X, Dai J, Boeke JD, Yang H, Xu X, Cai Y (2023) Dissecting aneuploidy phenotypes by constructing Sc2.0 chromosome VII and SCRaMbLEing synthetic disomic yeast. Cell Genom. 3(11):100364.

Schindler D, Dai J, Cai Y (2018) Synthetic genomics: A new venture to dissect genome fundamentals and engineer new functions. Curr Opin Chem Biol. 46:56-62.

§ equally contributed