The Bristol Centre for ProtoLife Research aims to pioneer new scientific and technological horizons derived from the knowledge and understanding of how life could have emerged from non-living matter. Our goal is to abstract the past to transform the future.

A key motivation is the synthetic design and construction of artificial cell-like entities – protocells – which are capable of energy capture and conversion, minimal metabolism and replication, gene-directed synthesis, growth and division, and basic (chemical) cognition.