The 2025 Lectures in Biology and Chemistry, co-organised by the Onassis Foundation and the Foundation for Research and Technology –HELLAS (FORTH), will be held from 7 to 11 of July on the grounds of FORTH in Heraklion, Crete.
These scientific lectures are organised annually since 2001 and are given in the English language by international highly reputated scientific personalities, among which many Nobel Prize laureates. They cover subjects, which are at the forefront of the current research activities in the areas of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics and Computer Science. Their aim is to further educate and promote talented young Greek and other International students of post Graduate or advanced Undergraduate level. The Onassis Foundation provides financial aid for travel and accommodation expenses for up to 35 Greek students and up to 15 International, selected on the basis of their academic performance.
This year’s Onassis Lectures are devoted to the advances, challenges, and future prospects of re-engineering biology through directed evolution and synthetic cellular pathways.
Biological systems have evolved over billions of years, with natural selection favoring the re-shaping of molecular structures and metabolic pathways that enhance survival in a continuously fluctuating chemical environment. Yet these solutions, optimized for fitness rather than human utility, are often suboptimal for applications in areas such as efficient chemistry, renewable energy, and medicine.
Directed evolution—a methodology inspired by natural selection but conducted in the laboratory—enables scientists to engineer proteins, enzymes, and even entire metabolic pathways with enhanced or novel functionalities. This approach involves iterative rounds of mutation and selection to traverse the vast "fitness landscapes" of molecular function. Initially laborious and time-consuming, directed evolution has become a central strategy in modern biotechnology, thanks to significant advances in high-throughput screening, rational design, and computational modeling.
The pioneering work of Frances Arnold, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018 and a keynote speaker of the 2025 Onassis Lecture series, demonstrated that laboratory evolution can reliably outperform rational design in engineering complex molecular functions. Her contributions established directed evolution as a transformative force across chemistry and biology.
Beyond individual enzymes, synthetic biology has emerged as a complementary field, aiming to build and rewire entire cellular processes. Researchers are designing new-to-nature metabolic pathways, including those capable of capturing and converting CO₂, offering novel solutions to climate and sustainability challenges. Advances in membrane biology, minimal cell design, and the recreation of basic metabolic modules have further expanded the scope of cellular engineering. Recent work has also broadened the focus of re-engineering biology beyond catalysis to the fine-tuning of protein conformational landscapes and dynamic regulation. Insights from statistical thermodynamics and free-energy landscape theory are reshaping our understanding of how allosteric networks evolve and adapt, balancing affinity, efficiency, and environmental responsiveness. Strategies now aim not only to optimize catalysis, but also to reprogram internal communication networks and the dynamic behavior of proteins, enabling the design of more adaptable and responsive molecular systems.
Technological innovations have further reshaped the landscape. Ultrahigh-throughput methods, such as droplet-based microfluidics, allow millions of enzyme variants to be screened rapidly, accelerating the exploration of protein sequence space. Concurrently, developments in real-time biosensing and wearable molecular monitors are beginning to bridge the gap between engineered biological systems and direct clinical or industrial applications.
Artificial intelligence has entered the field as a powerful accelerator. Large-scale protein language models and AI-driven structure prediction tools are enabling the in-silico design of functional biomolecules at an unprecedented pace, opening vast new territories for synthetic biology and biotechnology.
The 2025 Onassis series will highlight groundbreaking technologies and conceptual innovations, featuring presentations from world leaders in enzyme engineering, synthetic metabolism, minimal cell construction, thermodynamic modeling of protein evolution, and AI-driven biological design.
The Onassis Foundation Science Lecture Series Homepage
