So far, every biological cell has been derived from another biological cell - in nature as well in the laboratory. Until today, it has not been possible to build a living cell from single functional units, which may be attributed to the enormous complexity of molecules and modules in all known biological systems.
Motivated by the success of reductionist approaches in the physical sciences, and their strive to derive models to describe natural phenomena from first principles, we are interested to explore the potential of these kinds of approaches in biology.
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