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SUMMARY:Water and the Origins of Life - Matthew Powner (University College
  London)
DTSTART:20220427T150000Z
DTEND:20220427T160000Z
UID:TALK169595@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Oliver Shorttle
DESCRIPTION:Living organisms are highly complex chemical systems that expl
 oit a small constellation of universally conserved metabolites. The chemic
 al unity of these metabolites provides compelling evidence that a simple s
 et of predisposed reactions predicated the appearance of life on Earth. Co
 nversely\, traditional prebiotic chemistry has produced highly complex mix
 tures that bear little resemblance to the core metabolites of life. The co
 mplexity of prebiotic chemistry until recently had suggested that elucidat
 ing life’s origins was an insurmountable task\, but prebiotic systems ch
 emistry is now providing unprecedented scope to explore the origins of lif
 e and an exciting new perspective on a 4 billion-year-old problem. At the 
 heart of this new systems approach is an understanding that individual cla
 sses of metabolites cannot be considered in isolation if the chemical orig
 in of life on Earth is to be successfully elucidated. In this talk several
  recent advances that suggest that nucleotides and proteinogenic peptides 
 are predisposed chemical structures that can be facilely synthesised in wa
 ter will be presented [1-4].\n\nReferences:\n[1] Powner et al Nature 2009\
 , 459\, 239.\n[2] Islam et al. Nat. Chem. 2017\, 9\, 584.\n[3] Canavelli e
 t al. Nature 2019\, 571\, 546.\n[4] Foden et al. Science\, 2020\, 370\, 86
 5.
LOCATION:Main Lecture Theatre\, Old Divinity School\, St John's College
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