Publications by Sebastian Maerkl

Evolving Infectious Disease Dynamics Shape School-based Intervention Effectiveness

School-based interventions during epidemics are often controversial, as experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, where reducing transmission had to be weighed against the adverse effects on young children. However, it remains unclear how the broader epide ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2025

Continuous in situ synthesis of a complete set of tRNAs sustains steady-state translation in a recombinant cell-free system

Sebastian Maerkl

Construction of a self-regenerating biochemical system is critical for building a synthetic cell. An essential step in building a self-regenerative system is producing a complete set of tRNAs for translation, which remains a significant challenge. Here, we ...

Springer Science and Business Media LLC2025

Targeting protein-ligand neosurfaces with a generalizable deep learning tool

Sebastian Maerkl, Bruno Emanuel Ferreira De Sousa Correia, Luc Reymond, Sandrine Madeleine Suzanne Georgeon, Philippe Schwaller, Anthony Marchand, Leo Scheller, Arne Schneuing, Stephen Michael Buckley, Martin Pacesa

Molecular recognition events between proteins drive biological processes in living systems1. However, higher levels of mechanistic regulation have emerged, in which protein-protein interactions are conditioned to small molecules2, 3, 4-5. Despite recent ad ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2025

Long-Term Protein Synthesis with PURE in a Mesoscale Dialysis System

Francesco Stellacci, Sebastian Maerkl, Laura Sophie Grasemann

Cell-free systems are powerful tools in synthetic biology with versatile and wide-ranging applications. However, a significant bottleneck for these systems, particularly the PURE cell-free system, is their limited reaction lifespan and yield. Dialysis offe ...

2025

Nature-inspired recycling of a protein mixture into a green fluorescent protein-based hydrogel

Francesco Stellacci, Sebastian Maerkl

Protein-based materials are biocompatible and have a variety of remarkable properties; consequently, they are finding more and more applications. Nature recycles proteins in multiple ways, ranging from bio-degradation (a slow approach) to fast recycling of ...

2024

Regulatory Components for Bacterial Cell-Free Systems Engineering

Sebastian Maerkl

Cell-free systems are advancing synthetic biology through fast prototyping and modularity. Complex regulatory networks can now be implemented in cell-free systems enabling various applications, such as diagnostic tool development, gene circuit prototyping, ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2024

Towards Self-regeneration: Exploring the Limits of Protein Synthesis in the Protein Synthesis Using Recombinant Elements (PURE) Cell-free Transcription-Translation System

Sebastian Maerkl, Ragunathan Bava Ganesh

Self-regeneration is a key function of living systems that needs to be recapitulated in vitro to create a living synthetic cell. A major limiting factor for protein self-regeneration in the PURE cell-free transcription-translation system is its high protei ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2024

A comprehensive review of Microfluidic approaches in cell-free synthetic biology

Sebastian Maerkl

Cell-free synthetic biology has gained increasing popularity owing to its ability to elucidate biological functions in isolation from intricate cellular environments and the capacity to build increasingly complex biochemical systems in vitro. But cellfree ...

Frontiers Media SA2024

Clinical sensitivity and specificity of a high-throughput microfluidic nano-immunoassay combined with capillary blood microsampling for the identification of anti-SARS-CoV-2 Spike IgG serostatus

Sebastian Maerkl, Grégoire Michielin

ObjectivesWe evaluate the diagnostic performance of dried blood microsampling combined with a high-throughput microfluidic nano-immunoassay (NIA) for the identification of anti-SARS-CoV-2 Spike IgG seropositivity. MethodsWe conducted a serological study am ...

2023

A field-capable rapid plant DNA extraction protocol using microneedle patches for botanical surveying and monitoring

Sebastian Maerkl, Jonathan Selz, Nicolas Rémi Adam

PremiseA novel protocol for rapid plant DNA extraction using microneedles is proposed, which supports botanic surveys, taxonomy, and systematics. This protocol can be conducted in the field with limited laboratory skills and equipment. The protocol is vali ...

WILEY2023