An engineering story

Back in 2019, when our team was interviewed by NOS op 3

Welcome to my first blog! I am Maarten Lubbers, a Ph.D. candidate at Leiden University and one of the board members of SynBioNL. I love journeys, and all has to start somewhere. For my first blog, I would like to share with you my SynBio journey.

I had always been amazed by the magnificence and diversity of nature, the sublime beauty of shells but also the harshest environments creatures could still thrive in. As a kid, my parents always had to make sure I did not get lost in nature, as I was fully focused on snakes, birds, frogs, and so on. During high school, I envisioned myself as a ‘classical’ biologist, working on anatomy, and taxonomy, the getting-lost-in-old-natural-history-collections sort of stuff! In all honesty, I had very little interest in microbiology. During my Biology bachelor’s, I joined practicals focusing on genetic engineering of bacteria, in which I began to see the potential of microbiology to understand the fundamentals of life.

Then the big thing came: iGEM. How amazing it would be to engineer life in such a way that, on the one hand, could make us understand fundamental processes way better, and on the other hand, could let organisms fulfill specific tasks of interest! I never thought I would see life as a gigantic collection of different building blocks. I was even happier that I could combine my interest in biodiversity and microbiology, as our project was focused on the heterologous production of suckerin - a versatile protein from the Humboldt squid - in E. coli. Besides that, I had the opportunity to inform and inspire the general public about the opportunities synthetic biology can offer. During the iGEM Giant Jamboree, I was overwhelmed by the different journeys other iGEM teams had taken. From cell-free systems to aptamers; it was all there! Inspired, I knew my journey would not just end there. I quickly became one of the supervisors for the coming Leiden iGEM teams. Still, I love to brainstorm about various SynBio topics with a new group of students.

My take-home message? Follow your curiosities and you will find beautiful discoveries on your path and gain new sets of skills. Where my journey will end, I do not know, but I do foresee a rich future filled with a lot of bacteria and engineering.

- Maarten Lubbers