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SUMMARY:Origins of Life Systems Chemistry - Prof John Sutherland (MRC LMB)
DTSTART:20191017T170000Z
DTEND:20191017T183000Z
UID:TALK132982@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Trinity College Science Society
DESCRIPTION:Our first talk of the Michaelmas Term will be about the origin
 s of life systems chemistry by Professor John Sutherland FRS\, who is the 
 research leader in the Protein & Nucleic Acid Chemistry Division at MRC La
 boratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge. \n\nProfessor Sutherland
  explores the chemical origins of molecular biology and his main interest 
 is in uncovering prebiotically plausible syntheses of the informational\, 
 catalytic and compartment–forming molecules necessary for the emergence 
 of life. \n\nThe talk will be in the Winstanley Lecture Hall at Trinity on
  the 17th October. The doors will open at 18:00\, with drinks and refreshm
 ents provided\, and the talk will start at 18:15.\n\n"How can chemistry mo
 rph into biology? This is the key question about the origin of life\, be i
 t on our planet several billion years ago\, or elsewhere and so we need to
  think about chemistry in the context of planetary science if we want to k
 now where we came from and whether or not we are likely to be alone in the
  Universe. The chemistry used by biology to fabricate its various componen
 ts is by and large hopelessly inefficient in the absence of enzyme catalys
 ts\, so we need to look for different chemistry that can make the same com
 ponentry efficiently without enzymes. But where do we look? One approach i
 s to guess at the environment and then use laboratory simulation to invest
 igate its chemistry. The problem with this is the guesswork – there were
  presumably many different environments on early Earth and it is not obvio
 us what chemistry they might be associated with. An alternative approach i
 s to explore chemistry in a pretty much unconstrained way to try and find 
 out if all the molecules needed to kick-start biology can be made under si
 milar conditions from plausible feedstocks. If they can and the conditions
  required correspond to a particular environment on early Earth then that 
 environment is strongly implicated and can further guide chemical investig
 ations. In this lecture\, I will present the results of this latter approa
 ch and demonstrate how hellish conditions on Hadean-Archean Earth could ha
 ve set the stage for the transition from chemistry to biology."
LOCATION:Winstanley Lecture Hall\, Trinity College
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