Welcome back to Transcribed, the podcast where we unpack the minds building the future of biotech. Today’s guest, Professor Dr. Kerstin Goepfrich, is asking one of the most fundamental questions in all of science: what is life, and can we build it from scratch? As a full professor at Heidelberg University and group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, she is one of the world’s leading voices in synthetic biology and DNA nanotechnology. Her work shows that DNA is an extraordinary building material, engineering structures that mimic the machinery of living cells — cytoskeletons, contractile rings, nanopores built from the ground up, one molecule at a time. Understanding life means being able to recreate it, and that’s exactly what she’s working towards.

Professor Dr. Kerstin Goepfrich is a Full Professor at the Center for Molecular Biology at Heidelberg University and a Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research. She studied physics and molecular medicine in Erlangen, an unusual combination that shaped her interdisciplinary approach to biology. Her lab focuses on bottom-up synthetic biology, using DNA and RNA as building blocks to create minimal, self-replicating, evolving entities.

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Kerstin explains:

◼️ How her unusual background in physics and molecular medicine led her to seek a “deeper understanding of the world” and tackle big questions like “what is life?”

◼️ Why DNA is an “extraordinary building material” beyond information storage, enabling complex 3D structures like the iconic DNA origami smiley face

◼️ The challenges of RNA folding compared to DNA, and why RNA is crucial for building synthetic cells due to its ability to store information *and* execute function

◼️ The breakthrough of building a genetically encoded, evolvable RNA cytoskeleton from scratch, moving towards systems that can “create complexity by itself”

◼️ Her realistic timeline for creating a “very minimal self-replicating evolving entity” in the lab — and the hardest unsolved problem of integrating genes into genomes

◼️ The immediate applications of synthetic biology tools, from enhancing RNA therapeutics and aptamers to engineering synthetic immune factors and CO2-capturing cells

◼️ Her philosophical perspective on “what is life,” viewing it as a continuum from non-life to increasing complexity, rather than a black-and-white definition

00:00 Welcome to Transcribed

00:44 What is Life? Building it from Scratch

01:40 Physics, Molecular Medicine & the Quest for Deeper Understanding

03:00 From Studying to Building: The Path to Synthetic Biology

04:30 The Origins of Bottom-Up Synthetic Biology

05:50 DNA: More Than Information Storage — An Extraordinary Building Material

07:40 The Challenges & Promise of RNA Origami

10:30 Building a Genetically Encoded RNA Cytoskeleton

13:00 The Risks & Biocontainment of Synthetic Life

14:00 AI, AlphaFold & the Future of RNA Folding

17:30 When Will We Build a Self-Replicating Synthetic Cell?

19:30 The Hardest Unsolved Problem in Synthetic Cell Research

21:00 From Science Fiction to Reality: Applications of Synthetic Cells

25:00 Curiosity-Driven Research vs. Application-Focused Science

27:00 The Philosophy of Life: A Continuum of Complexity

30:00 Life Beyond Earth: Carbon-Based or Something Else?

32:00 Advice for Young Scientists in Synthetic Biology

34:00 Closing
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