After nearly a decade in the Department of Chemistry at the NAT School, Boekhoven’s group recently moved to the Department of Bioscience, a great occasion to discover more about the science and the person behind it.
NAT: You have been a professor at NAT School for almost 10 years now, what is your background and what made you come to Munich?
Prof. Job Boekhoven (JB): I come from a family of expats, and growing up, my siblings and I had the chance to live all over the world – wherever my parents’ paths led. That lifestyle gave me a love for discovering new places and cultures, which naturally fits with an academic career. I studied in the Netherlands, with a short period in the UK, continued my journey in the USA, and eventually we decided to settle in Germany – a new chapter in a country full of opportunity.
My background is in organic chemistry—the craft of building molecules from smaller ones. As an undergraduate, I discovered supramolecular chemistry and the concept of self-assembly, and I was immediately drawn to the idea of creating structures without traditional synthesis. I pursued a PhD in this field, developing a method of self-assembly driven by chemical reactions, inspired by how biology organizes itself. During my postdoc, I applied these ideas to biomedical materials, working on self-assembling peptides that form nanofibers to aid healing after injuries like spinal cord damage. It’s rewarding to see fundamental chemistry make a real-world impact.
NAT: Can you tell us a little more about your research interests?
JB: I find it incredibly inspiring what biology does with molecules. Technically, we can make most of the molecules associated with life, be it DNA, RNA, proteins, or small molecules. We can even mix them together in something that vaguely resembles a cell, which we call a synthetic cell. Yet, we cannot make life that way. Somehow, there is a missing ingredient, and for a long time, it was believed that there was some vital force that would turn any dead material into a living one. We now know there is no such thing. There is no secret ingredient that turns chemistry into biology. Essentially, biology is extremely complex, sophisticated, and beautiful chemistry. That inspires me. It means there is plenty of room for us chemists.
With my lab, I therefore took on the bold mission of synthesizing life. Making life not as we know it, but as we do not know it (yet). A life form so simple that it has all the minimal hallmarks to pass as life by some definitions – it needs to sustain itself from the few ingredients we feed it, it needs to replicate itself, and it has to undergo evolution as Darwin described it. As our toolboxes, we use synthetic cells that we load up with peptides, nucleic acids, and small molecules designed to convert simple feed molecules into more complex ones that help with replication.
NAT: “Making life” may sound frightening to a lot of people. Are you trying to make a Frankenstein’s monster or recreate the Golem of Prague?
JB: No, not at all. The life forms we envision developing are simple and completely dependent on us for their sustenance. They would not resemble at all the organisms of biology. To ensure their containment, we will design safeguards to make them dependent on molecules that do not exist outside the lab. Moreover, as we get even remotely close to our goal, we adopt methodologies and protocols similar to those used by scientists working with genetically modified organisms like bacteria.
NAT: Why should we embrace these technologies (other than scientific interest) and not be afraid of them? What are the potential benefits for humankind?
JB: There are countless compelling reasons to develop synthetic life. First and foremost, it is to revolutionize biotechnology, medicine, and materials science. Look at all the examples in which life is used in our society and technology – the yeast in our bread, mold in our cheese, the bacteria that produces life-saving insulin or antibiotics, or the algae that are engineered to produce sustainable biofuels. Yet, as versatile as natural life is, it comes with limitations. Life relies on highly specialized enzymes that operate in a relatively narrow window of pH, solvents, and temperature.
Synthetic life, in contrast, does not have to depend on enzymes, and we could expand the window of operation. We could evolve a life form that converts plastics into useful monomers at 250°C in an organic solvent. Or a life form capable of degrading PFAS – the persistent “forever chemicals” that current enzymes struggle to touch. We might even develop systems that produce complex drugs that natural enzymes cannot synthesize. Simply put, we could use the working principles of life, optimizing through evolution, outside of the classical operation window of life.
Beyond practical applications, making synthetic life also offers profound insights into the nature of life itself. By building life from the bottom up, we can test what the simplest, minimal ingredients are needed. We can then wonder whether these ingredients were available on our planet before life? We can also inform the space agencies on their astrobiology missions what molecular signatures to look for.
Of course, there are potential risks. Could synthetic life be misused for harmful purposes? This is where the defense and biosecurity aspects come into play. Again, this is a reason to synthesize life. Part of our responsibility is to anticipate and understand the dangers synthetic life might pose. If these technologies carry risks to society, it’s critical that we are the ones investigating them – transparently, responsibly, and proactively – rather than leaving that task to actors who may not share the same ethical standards or commitment to public safety.
So, taken together, synthetic life will revolutionize many academic fields and our society as well. It carries risks like any work on modified organisms. So, we should embark on this mission as long as it is done responsibly.
NAT: Doing research often involves (international) collaboration(s). Which collaborators bring you the most joy or scientific output and why?
JB: The most amazing collaborators are those who share a similar mission yet come from different backgrounds. Through the Max Planck Matter to Life program, we are fortunate to have a program with many German collaborators, most outside of Bavaria. So, that’s international, right?
NAT: You’ve recently moved within the NAT School from the Chemistry Department to the Bioscience Department. What are you motives for doing this, what are you specifically hoping to achieve by this move?
JB: Due to our group’s research interests, I find it challenging to position ourselves within a specific department – we build molecules like an organic chemist, use the equipment of physical chemistry, develop theories for biophysics, build new enzymes with biochemistry, and create new materials for materials science. So, which department do we belong to? I am, therefore, a big supporter of the new School system. Our science should be free of pigeonholes and instead flow between the disciplines. I found that the Bioscience Department was very open to the idea of scientific diversity, as it is, in itself, a mixture of biophysics and biochemistry.
NAT: What would you ultimately like to accomplish and what are your goals for the near future?
JB: It would be amazing to push the work we have been doing so far into a real-life application over the following decades. I have been incredibly fortunate to work on academic questions and thereby expand the boundaries of our knowledge. Yet, it would be great to also offer a tangible, useful product in return for society.
But more importantly, I hope to sustain an environment in which my amazing team feels free to explore the boundaries of science, develop themselves for their next steps in their careers, and utilize their creativity to answer relevant questions.
NAT: Are you looking to expand your lab and thus looking for people, like MSc or PhD students?
JB: I am always looking for team members excited to work in an international environment on topics that extend beyond your classical organic, bio-, or physical chemistry.
More links and information
- Prof. Boekhoven’s profile: https://www.professoren.tum.de/en/boekhoven-job
- BoekhovenLab https://boekhovenlab.com
- Department of Bioscience in the TUM School of Natural Sciences https://www.bio.nat.tum.de/en/bio/homepage/
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