We are a new lab at the Generative Biology Institute (EIT) in Oxford, UK.

Mission. To develop methodology for writing, delivering, and propagating synthetic chromosomes across cell divisions and generations in mammals and plants.

Why? The chromosome is the fundamental unit of inheritance and the only vehicle large enough to encode new biological functions, yet we lack the tools to build one from scratch and control its transmission. For a synthetic chromosome to be truly useful, it must be maintained faithfully through mitosis in dividing cells and transmitted through meiosis to offspring. Solving this would transform our ability to engineer genomes across species, with broad implications for how we understand and manipulate heredity.

Challenges. This requires solving several interconnected problems: how to segregate synthetic chromosomes faithfully through mitosis, how to design centromeres that work across diverse species, and how to control chromosome pairing and recombination during meiosis to ensure inheritance across generations.