Schmidt Sciences DevCell Project
Developer Cells as a Scalable Platform for
Predictable Engineering of (Non-Living) Biological Machines
| Richard M. Murray Schmidt Sciences |
Akshay Maheshwari Anton Jackson-Smith Anton Molina San Francisco (b.next) |
Cécile Chazot Neha Kamat Allen Liu Julius Lucks Ryan Truby Danielle Tullman-Ercek
Chicago (Northwestern/U. Mich)
Michael Booth Oscar Ces Claudia Contini Yuval Elani James Hindley Ravinash Krishna Kumar
London (Imperial/King's/UCL)
The goal of this project is to demonstrate a model for biological systems engineering that can serve as a starting point for a larger effort in systems engineering of biological systems. We are focused on proof-of-concept demonstrations in synthetic cells, a class of non-living biological machines, constructed from biological components such as lipids, amino acids, proteins, and DNA. Synthetic cells do not mutate or evolve, allowing more systematic and repeatable engineering, and also providing significant advantages in environments where it may not be desirable to deploy genetically engineered organisms. A major element of our work is the development of open source tools that help “routinize” the creation of synthetic cells. We anticipate that the methods we develop can also serve as a testbed for engineering methods in living organisms.
Upcoming events
The following events will have activities related to the developer cell project. Additional information can be found by following the link.
- Build-A-Cell workshop, Feb 2026 (2 February 2026, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI))
- SynCell 2026 (22 April 2026, Institute of Physics, London)
- SEED 2026 (15 June 2026, Denver, CO)
Links to additional resources
- BioCRNpyler - Biomolecular chemical reaction network compiler
- BioSCRAPE - Biological stochastic simulation of single cell reactions and parameter estimation
- Build-A-Cell - Open collaboration supporting the science and engineering of building synthetic cells
- Nucleus - Open source package for synthetic cell builders
- TRILL - Sandbox for creative protein engineering and discovery
- Vivarium - Simulation engine for composing and executing integrative multi-scale models
| Member countries | UK, USA |
|---|---|
| Member organizations | b.next, Imperial College London, King's College London, Northwestern University, University College London, Univerisity of Michigan |
| Founded | 2025-11-01 |
| Ended | |
| URL |
The Schmidt Sciences Developer Cell (DevCell) project is a one year demonstration project to demonstrate the use of Developer Cells (DevCells).