Unexpected Discoveries Research Articles

I.A. Bunin and F.M. Dostoevsky: Some Reflections on Poetics

Ivan Bunin’s works have long been considered in the broad context of Russian and world literature. An original modern author, he inherited traditions and created new models in poetics. Among the writers whose heritage Bunin refers to, Fyodor Dostoevsky seems most alien and divergent to him as a result of the striking incompatibility of their literary languages. An outstanding master of style, Bunin contradicts Dostoevsky’s novels with their stream-of-consciousness, mental candor, searching for God and truth, and, let us be honest, with all their evident neglect of the aesthetic part of the text. Bunin also exposes a deep abyss in a human soul, but his fine style is a real proof for the recognition of new symbols and philosophy. Closer penetration into the texts of Bunin leads to almost unexpected discoveries. The Petersburg image of Dostoevsky inter alia affects the “Paris text” of Bunin. Already in his pre-revolutionary works the village as locus amoenus (in the broadest sense as nature or manor) opposes the locus horribilis of the metropolis in “Dostoyevsky style,” with all its civilizational gains and losses ( Looped Ears ). Bunin brings many strokes outlined by his predecessor to its logical conclusion, first of all Godlessness, a total abandonment of a human soul in a megalopolis. Being organically included in Bunin’s literary work, Dostoevsky is his direct predecessor in the verbalization of urban landscapes ( Un petit accident ). Bunin turns toward Dostoevsky and if not consciously then typologically relies on his traditions. The most elusive side of Bunin’s nature, the thinker, becomes evident due to a small comparative analysis of two strikingly dissimilar poetics.

Mental (2008): Sōda Kazuhiro’s Observational Cinema

This article examines Sōda Kazuhiro’s observational documentary, especially his second observational film, Seishin (Mental), and specifically considers its participatory methods, sociohistorical circumstances, and philosophical anthropology. Influenced by North American direct cinema of the 1960s (especially Frederick Wiseman) as well as Bronisław Malinowski’s participant observation, Sōda’s observational style not only emphasizes the self-affective nature of documentary eyes but also rejects the preconceived reality of its object. Documentary is not conceived “in the head”: unexpected discoveries, which inevitably accompany his participatory methods, define his object from an ex ante facto (before the fact) perspective. Examples of this are the contingency of the mental-bodily complex (Seishin) and self-contradictory social situations (Senkyo and Senkyo 2). Because it’s an observationalparticipatory film, Seishin responds to the sociopolitical climates of the late 2000s, especially the Japanese government’s reforms of health and medical services. Specifically, two laws were enacted while the film was in production: the 2005 Support for Independence of Persons with Disability (SIPD) Act and the 2006 Suicide Prevention Act. Furthermore, Seishin represents an anthropological (techno-ontological) standpoint similar to that of Gilbert Simondon, Miki Kiyoshi, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This article investigates the film’s ontology, externalism, and political critique of neoliberalism in the late 2000s.

Planned Luck: How Incubators Can Facilitate Serendipity for Nascent Entrepreneurs Through Fostering Network Embeddedness

Incubators often play an important role in facilitating networks for entrepreneurs. However, nascent entrepreneurs typically face high uncertainty and goal ambiguity, and which ties could provide the resources needed for achieving the respective goal is often unknown in advance. How do incubators facilitate entrepreneurs’ network embeddedness in the context of such uncertainty? Using an explorative case-study approach, we studied an incubator in Kenya, an extreme setting from an uncertainty perspective. Our findings show how in high-uncertainty contexts, a social structure that allows for flexibility can provide the conditions under which unexpected discoveries are enabled, facilitating opportunity-inducing networks.

From Chance to Serendipity: Knowledge Workers’ Experiences of Serendipitous Social Encounters

Serendipity refers to uncontrolled circumstances that lead to unexpected yet fortunate discoveries. The phenomenon has been studied extensively in relation to information retrieval. However, serendipity in the context of social encounters has been the subject of few empirical studies. In professional life, social serendipity might result in benefits such as fruitful collaboration, successful recruitment, discovery of novel information, and acquisition of crucial new perspectives from peers. Despite the potential significance of serendipity, particularly for knowledge work, there is a lack of empirical understanding of related subjective experiences and the role of technology within the process of encountering unsought findings. This qualitative study investigates knowledge workers’ detailed narratives of serendipitous social encounters and the related factors through an analysis of 37 responses to an international online survey. We provide a detailed account of the experiential characteristics and contextual qualities of the reported instances of social serendipity. Finally, we discuss the seemingly minor role of technology in social serendipity and research avenues to computationally enhance social serendipity.

Non-coding RNAs in GI cancers: from cancer hallmarks to clinical utility

One of the most unexpected discoveries in molecular oncology, in the last decades, was the identification of a new layer of protein coding gene regulation by transcripts that do not...

Simulations of Transport in Hard Particle Systems

Hard particle systems are among the most successful, inspiring and prolific models of physics. They contain the essential ingredients to understand a large class of complex phenomena, from phase transitions to glassy dynamics, jamming, or the physics of liquid crystals and granular materials, to mention just a few. As we discuss in this paper, their study also provides crucial insights on the problem of transport out of equilibrium. A main tool in this endeavour are computer simulations of hard particles. Here we review some of our work in this direction, focusing on the hard disks fluid as a model system. In this quest we will address, using extensive numerical simulations, some of the key open problems in the physics of transport, ranging from local equilibrium and Fourier’s law to the transition to convective flow in the presence of gravity, the efficiency of boundary dissipation, or the universality of anomalous transport in low dimensions. In particular, we probe numerically the macroscopic local equilibrium hypothesis, which allows to measure the fluid’s equation of state in nonequilibrium simulations, uncovering along the way subtle nonlocal corrections to local equilibrium and a remarkable bulk-boundary decoupling phenomenon in fluids out of equilibrium. We further show that the the hydrodynamic profiles that a system develops when driven out of equilibrium by an arbitrary temperature gradient obey universal scaling laws, a result that allows the determination of transport coefficients with unprecedented precission and proves that Fourier’s law remains valid in highly nonlinear regimes. Switching on a gravity field against the temperature gradient, we investigate numerically the transition to convective flow. We uncover a surprising two-step transition scenario with two different critical thresholds for the hot bath temperature, a first one where convection kicks but gravity hinders heat transport, and a second critical temperature where a percolation transition of streamlines connecting the hot and cold baths triggers efficient convective heat transport. We also address numerically the efficiency of boundary heat baths to dissipate the energy provided by a bulk driving mechanism. As a bonus track, we depart from the hard disks model to study anomalous transport in a related hard-particle system, the 1d diatomic hard-point gas. We show unambiguously that the universality conjectured for anomalous transport in 1d breaks down for this model, calling into question recent theoretical predictions and offering a new perspective on anomalous transport in low dimensions. Our results show how carefully-crafted numerical simulations of simple hard particle systems can lead to unexpected discoveries in the physics of transport, paving the way to further advances in nonequilibrium physics.

User-Friendly and Interactive Analysis of ChIP-Seq Data Using EaSeq.

ChIP-seq is a central method to gain understanding of the regulatory networks in the genome of stem cells and during differentiation. Exploration and analysis of such genome-wide data often leads to unexpected discoveries and new hypotheses. It therefore accelerates and improves the discovery phase, when scientists with biological understanding are enabled to analyze and visualize data. EaSeq ( http://easeq.net ) offers integrated exploration of genome-wide data in a visual, versatile, user-friendly, and interactive manner that connects abstract interpretations to the signal distribution at the underlying loci. Here we introduce the interface, data types, and acquisition, and guide the reader through two example workflows. These workflows will enable the reader to perform genome-wide analysis and visualization of transcription factor binding sites and histone marks. This includes making basic plots; finding, annotating, sorting, and filtering of peaks; using EaSeq as a genome browser; measuring ChIP-seq signal and calculating ratios; as well as data import and export.

WOMEN IN REPRODUCTIVE SCIENCE: Reproduction down under.

Australia is home to a unique assembly of mammals - the marsupials and monotremes. Despite this uniqueness, they have been largely ignored by the biomedical scientific community, and yet study of marsupials has contributed to modern research on reproduction, development, evolution, conservation, molecular and comparative genomics. My lifetime passion for these long-neglected Australian fauna has led to unexpected discoveries and insights that challenged assumptions and opened up new areas of international research. I used a range of disciplinary expertise to pursue the study of these unique mammals. My main experimental species has been the tammar wallaby that I have used as a model species to investigate and understand not only biomedical problems but also to provide knowledge that is critical for the continued conservation and management of Australia's dwindling native mammals. This model provided more than a few surprises for me and my wonderful team of students, post-docs and collaborators about how hormones, genes and signalling molecules control reproductive biology and development in a wider context as well as how the interactions of the environment with mother and conceptus, with mother and fetus and mother and young ultimately control most aspects of successful reproduction in mammals.

Identifying Complex Sources in Large Astronomical Data Sets Using a Coarse-grained Complexity Measure

The volume of data that will be produced by the next generation of astrophysical instruments represents a significant opportunity for making unplanned and unexpected discoveries. Conversely, finding unexpected objects or phenomena within such large volumes of data presents a challenge that may best be solved using computational and statistical approaches. We present the application of a coarse-grained complexity measure for identifying interesting observations in large astronomical data sets. This measure, which has been termed apparent complexity, has been shown to model human intuition and perceptions of complexity. Apparent complexity is computationally efficient to derive and can be used to segment and identify interesting observations in very large data sets based on their morphological complexity. We show, using data from the Australia Telescope Large Area Survey, that apparent complexity can be combined with clustering methods to provide an automated process for distinguishing between images of galaxies which have been classified as having simple and complex morphologies. The approach generalizes well when applied to new data after being calibrated on a smaller data set, where it performs better than tested classification methods using pixel data. This generalizability positions apparent complexity as a suitable machine-learning feature for identifying complex observations with unanticipated features.

Difficult Places, Unexpected Discoveries

Difficult Places, Unexpected Discoveries

Abstract LB-006: Proteogenomic characterization of human colon cancer reveals new therapeutic opportunities

Abstract We prospectively collected matched tumor specimens, adjacent non-tumor tissues, and blood samples from 110 colon cancer patients and analyzed the samples using seven omics platforms, including whole-exome sequencing, copy number arrays, RNA-Seq, miRNA-Seq, label-free global proteomics, isobaric tandem mass tag (TMT) labeling-based global proteomics, and TMT-based phosphoproteomics. Comparative proteomic and phosphoproteomic analysis of paired tumor and adjacent normal samples produced the first comprehensive catalogue of colon cancer-associated proteins and phosphosites, including known and putative new biomarkers and drug targets. These cancer-associated proteins and phosphosites had very little overlap with known cancer genes in the Cancer Gene Census, providing a novel information layer to our knowledge about colon cancer. One notable finding in differential proteome analysis is the identification of several cancer/testis antigens that were recurrently over-expressed in tumors compared to adjacent normal tissue, including IGF2BP3 (51%), SPAG1 (14%), and ATAD2 (8%). Through integrative analysis of the whole-exome sequencing, RNA-Seq, and proteomics data, we further predicted personalized neoantigens for 38% of the patients. In total, we found proteomics-supported neoantigens or cancer/testis antigens for 78% of the tumors in this cohort, demonstrating the potential of proteogenomics in identifying tumor antigens for cancer vaccine development. Proteomics data complemented somatic copy number analysis results and showed that multiple somatic copy number deletion events converge to repress the endocytosis pathway, suggesting its tumor suppressor role in colon cancer. In addition to reinforcing or complementing genomic findings, proteogenomic integration may also contradict genomics data-based inferences and lead to unexpected discoveries and therapeutic opportunities. Proteomics data identified SOX9 as an oncogene in colon cancer, whereas it was predicted to be a tumor suppressor based on somatic mutation data in the TCGA study. Phosphoproteomics data revealed a dual role of Rb phosphorylation in promoting proliferation and repressing apoptosis in colon cancer, clarifying the long-standing puzzle of colon cancer-specific amplification of this tumor suppressor and highlighting a unique opportunity for targeting Rb phosphorylation in colon cancer. Microsatellite instability status has been approved by the FDA as a biomarker for selecting patients for checkpoint inhibitor therapy in colorectal and other solid tumors. However, many MSI-high tumors fail to respond to checkpoint inhibition. Our proteogenomic analysis identified a subtype-specific association between increased glycolysis and decreased CD8 T cell infiltration in MSI-high colon tumors, suggesting glycolysis as a target for overcoming immune evasion in this MSI-H tumors. We make the primary and processed datasets available in publicly accessible data repositories and portals to allow broad use of these datasets for new biological discoveries and therapeutic hypothesis generation. Citation Format: Bing Zhang, Suhas Vasaikar, Chen Huang, Xiaojing Wang, Vladislav A. Petyuk, Sara R. Savage, Bo Wen, Yongchao Dou, Yun Zhang, Zhiao Shi, Osama A. Arshad, Marina A. Gritsenko, Lisa J. Zimmerman, Jason E. McDermott, Therese R. Clauss, Ronald J. Moore, Rui Zhao, Matthew E. Monroe, Yi-Ting Wang, Matthew C. Chambers, Robbert J. Slebos, Ken S. Lau, Qianxing Mo, Li Ding, Matthew Ellis, Mathangi Thiagarajan, Christopher R. Kinsinger, Henry Rodriguez, Richard D. Smith, Karin D. Rodland, Daniel C. Liebler, Tao Liu, CPTAC Investigators. Proteogenomic characterization of human colon cancer reveals new therapeutic opportunities [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-006.

A serendipity-biased Deepwalk for collaborators recommendation.

Scientific collaboration has become a common behaviour in academia. Various recommendation strategies have been designed to provide relevant collaborators for the target scholars. However, scholars are no longer satisfied with the acquainted collaborator recommendations, which may narrow their horizons. Serendipity in the recommender system has attracted increasing attention from researchers in recent years. Serendipity traditionally denotes the faculty of making surprising discoveries. The unexpected and valuable scientific discoveries in science such as X-rays and penicillin may be attributed to serendipity. In this paper, we design a novel recommender system to provide serendipitous scientific collaborators, which learns the serendipity-biased vector representation of each node in the co-author network. We first introduce the definition of serendipitous collaborators from three components of serendipity: relevance, unexpectedness, and value, respectively. Then we improve the transition probability of random walk in DeepWalk, and propose a serendipity-biased DeepWalk, called Seren2vec. The walker jumps to the next neighbor node with the proportional probability of edge weight in the co-author network. Meanwhile, the edge weight is determined by the three indices in definition. Finally, Top-N serendipitous collaborators are generated based on the cosine similarity between scholar vectors. We conducted extensive experiments on the DBLP data set to validate our recommendation performance, and the evaluations from serendipity-based metrics show that Seren2vec outperforms other baseline methods without much loss of recommendation accuracy.

Taxonomy of the Clingfishes (Gobiesocidae): a 260 year journey through the marine intertidal zone and beyond.

Event Abstract Back to Event Taxonomy of the Clingfishes (Gobiesocidae): a 260 year journey through the marine intertidal zone and beyond. Kevin W. Conway1* 1 Texas A&M University, United States Members of the family Gobiesocidae (clingfishes) are generally benthic, and predominantly marine fishes that inhabit shallow (<60 meters depth) coastal areas in temperate and tropical regions. A handful of species also inhabit freshwater streams in the Neotropics. Gobiesocids come in an array of different body shapes, ranging from dorso-ventrally compressed to anguilliform, and body sizes, ranging from only ~10mm SL up to ~300mm SL. Commonly referred to as clingfishes, gobiesocids possess an adhesive disc on their ventral surface (formed from the elements of the paired-fins and their girdles) with which they attach with tenacity to irregular and heavily fouled substrates. The anatomy of this disc can differ markedly between even closely related species, the members of different genera and/or subfamilies, and though still relatively poorly explored, is paramount to gobiesocid taxonomy and classification. As of June 2019, the Gobiesocidae contains 178 valid species divided between 50 genera and (depending on the researcher) either 2 or 10 different subfamilies. Though some members of the Gobiesocidae were already described by Linnaeus in 1758, over 50% have been discovered and described only in the last 60 years. Since 2010 (less than 10 years ago), 20 new species and 4 new genera have been described, and 1 new subfamily recognized, based almost exclusively on morphological characters. Several of these recently described taxa exhibit novel characters hitherto unknown for the group, including putative venom glands, bewildering heterodontic dentitions, and purportedly even asymmetrical bauplans. I provide an overview of the taxonomic history of gobiesocid fishes from Linnaeus to the present, highlight the recent and unexpected discoveries in this group, and end with a plea for more detailed anatomical studies on these and other groups of fishes (even those that are considered to be relatively well-studied). Keywords: Teleostei, Gobiesocidae, Taxonomy, Classification, Anatomy Conference: XVI European Congress of Ichthyology, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2 Sep - 6 Sep, 2019. Presentation Type: Plenary Invited Presentation Topic: TAXONOMY, PHYLOGENY AND ZOOGEOGRAPHY Citation: Conway KW (2019). Taxonomy of the Clingfishes (Gobiesocidae): a 260 year journey through the marine intertidal zone and beyond.. Front. Mar. Sci. Conference Abstract: XVI European Congress of Ichthyology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fmars.2019.07.00152 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 18 Jun 2019; Published Online: 14 Aug 2019. * Correspondence: Dr. Kevin W Conway, Texas A&M University, College Station, United States, conwaykw@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Kevin W Conway Google Kevin W Conway Google Scholar Kevin W Conway PubMed Kevin W Conway Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

One Belt One Road—New Game, Established Rules

Some, both in and outside of academia, have serious concerns that the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative at such an unprecedented scale would inadvertently destabilize current patterns of international rules (Authors’ notes). However, our tracking data has clearly shown that the OBOR initiative has not intended to reach, nor has actually performed, beyond the existing framework of international order. One of the unexpected discoveries we made as we determined what rules dictated the OBOR progress was that established rules since the Bretton Woods System and the UN appeared to function properly when relevant parties worked for their deals. The research was designed to investigate the operational rules in OBOR’s economic activities. Its methodology is associated with the role of free markets in international relations, but we examined the governance established by the international regimes. We also established analytical structure to explore the effects of variables such as reciprocity, nondiscrimination, and sovereignty. Our findings were convincing to say the least, the established international order and rules, norms, and decision making procedures inspired all actors in the OBOR initiative. Even compromised policies beyond current rules would normally be considered as being tentative solutions. We trust that our readers will find our tracking data based empirical method as effective and they will benefit from our analysis and discoveries as they observe and involve themselves in the OBOR processes.

Introduction

Introduction

On serendipity: The happy discovery of unsought knowledge

On serendipity: The happy discovery of unsought knowledge

Management and Follow-up of Patients with a Bronchial Neuroendocrine Tumor in the Last Twenty Years in Ireland: Expected Inconsistencies and Unexpected Discoveries.

Bronchial neuroendocrine tumors (NET) are classified into well-differentiated typical carcinoids (TC), atypical carcinoids (AC), large cell neuroendocrine carcinomas (LCNEC), and small cell lung carcinomas (SCLC). We retrospectively reviewed and analyzed the diagnostic and therapeutic aspects, follow-up data, and outcomes of all patients diagnosed with a bronchial NET from 1995 to 2015 at our institution. Patients with LCNEC or SCLC were excluded due to the biological and clinical differences from the other bronchial NET. The clinical, laboratory, imaging, treatment, and follow-up data were collected and analyzed keeping in mind the recently published international recommendations. Forty-six patients were included in the study. Of these, 37 had a TC and 5 an AC. In 4 patients, the histological characterization was inadequate. Forty-four patients underwent surgery. Four patients developed metastatic disease. Interestingly, 14 patients had one or more other tumors diagnosed at some stage and 3 of them had three different tumors. A total of 7 patients died. The analysis of the laboratory and pathology assessment identified some inconsistencies when compared to the international recommendations. Although the treatment of bronchial NET at our institution was consistent with the successively published recommendations, it appears that the diagnostic process and the follow-up surveillance were not. We think that a systematic multidisciplinary approach might improve bronchial NET patient care. A relatively high rate of occurrence of a second, or also a third, non-NET tumor was observed, though the statistical value of such observation could not be exhaustively elucidated in this numerically limited patient population. In our opinion, the observed high rate of second malignancies in this patient cohort highlights the necessity of optimizing the follow-up of the bronchial NET patients, also considering the very good survival rate achieved with regard to the bronchial NET.

Entering into a Community-University Collaboration: Reflections from the Whole Community Project

First paragraph: When asked to tell the story of how and why I was invited and decided to join the Food Dignity research project, I found myself traveling back over a long road full of unexpected turns, bumps, discoveries, and delights. And as I began to reflect over the five years spent implementing that project in Tompkins County, New York, I was once more awed by the countless stories to be told and knew that, at best, I could offer merely a glimpse of the wonderful and challenging experi­ences that were ultimately instrumental in learning valuable lessons for cultivating sustainable food systems. In sharing the process and results of being part of such a unique opportunity, I hope to both inspire and challenge readers to explore the possi­bilities that can exist when the sustainability of our food systems places a high value on everyone experiencing “dignity” in their relationship to food—whether as a consumer, entrepreneur, farmer, composter, or activist.... See the press release for this article.

Multifractality without fine-tuning in a Floquet quasiperiodic chain

Periodically driven, or Floquet, disordered quantum systems have generated many unexpected discoveries of late, such as the anomalous Floquet Anderson insulator and the discrete time crystal. Here, we report the emergence of an entire band of multifractal wavefunctions in a periodically driven chain of non-interacting particles subject to spatially quasiperiodic disorder. Remarkably, this multifractality is robust in that it does not require any fine-tuning of the model parameters, which sets it apart from the known multifractality of critical wavefunctions. The multifractality arises as the periodic drive hybridises the localised and delocalised sectors of the undriven spectrum. We account for this phenomenon in a simple random matrix based theory. Finally, we discuss dynamical signatures of the multifractal states, which should betray their presence in cold atom experiments. Such a simple yet robust realisation of multifractality could advance this so far elusive phenomenon towards applications, such as the proposed disorder-induced enhancement of a superfluid transition.

Yeast 2.0-connecting the dots in the construction of the world's first functional synthetic eukaryotic genome.

Historians of the future may well describe 2018 as the year that the world's first functional synthetic eukaryotic genome became a reality. Without the benefit of hindsight, it might be hard to completely grasp the long-term significance of a breakthrough moment in the history of science like this. The role of synthetic biology in the imminent birth of a budding Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast cell carrying 16 man-made chromosomes causes the world of science to teeter on the threshold of a future-defining scientific frontier. The genome-engineering tools and technologies currently being developed to produce the ultimate yeast genome will irreversibly connect the dots between our improved understanding of the fundamentals of a complex cell containing its DNA in a specialised nucleus and the application of bioengineered eukaryotes designed for advanced biomanufacturing of beneficial products. By joining up the dots between the findings and learnings from the international Synthetic Yeast Genome project (known as the Yeast 2.0 or Sc2.0 project) and concurrent advancements in biodesign tools and smart data-intensive technologies, a future world powered by a thriving bioeconomy seems realistic. This global project demonstrates how a collaborative network of dot connectors—driven by a tinkerer's indomitable curiosity to understand how things work inside a eukaryotic cell—are using cutting-edge biodesign concepts and synthetic biology tools to advance science and to positively frame human futures (i.e. improved quality of life) in a planetary context (i.e. a sustainable environment). Explorations such as this have a rich history of resulting in unexpected discoveries and unanticipated applications for the benefit of people and planet. However, we must learn from past explorations into controversial futuristic sciences and ensure that researchers at the forefront of an emerging science such as synthetic biology remain connected to all stakeholders’ concerns about the biosafety, bioethics and regulatory aspects of their pioneering work. This article presents a shared vision of constructing a synthetic eukaryotic genome in a safe model organism by using novel concepts and advanced technologies. This multidisciplinary and collaborative project is conducted under a sound governance structure that does not only respect the scientific achievements and lessons from the past, but that is also focussed on leading the present and helping to secure a brighter future for all.