Dear Colleagues,
This is a friendly reminder that we have a Special Seminar today from 2 pm
till 3 pm in the Division Room. I hope to see you there enjoying Dr. Olga
Taran Iourova's talk about the chemical origin of life.
Best,
Dmitry
On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 5:16 PM, Dmitry Zubarev <zubarev.dy(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
We have a Special Seminar scheduled for the next Tuesday, November 26,
from 2:00 pm till 3:00 pm in the Division Room. Dr. Olga Taran Iourova
(Whitesides Group) will tell us about her work in the Origins of Life. This
area is relatively new for the group and we are currently building up a
collaborative effort to merge theory and computations from our side with
Olga's experimental research. I hope to see you on Tuesday. The abstract
follows
Best,
Dmitry
The Chemical Origin of Life
As chemists, we see life as network of chemical reactions. What chemicals
and reaction conditions were necessary to start these reactions? How
complex did the initial reaction network need to be to become “alive”? To
answer these questions we study “Chemical Fossils” - small simple molecules
common to all living cells, which might be remnants of prebiotic chemistry
embedded in our biochemistry, just like real fossils are remains of
previous life embedded in rocks. We are looking for these “Fossils”,
tracing their plausible prebiotic geochemical origins, and using them to
build simple reaction networks. To illustrate this approach I will talk
about two ongoing projects from our lab: the potassium-sodium gradient and
redox cofactors.