School of Computer Science

Origin of life: From lipid we came, to fat we shall return

Date(s)
Wednesday 20th April 2011 (15:00-16:00)
Contact
Brian Logan
Description

Speaker: Omer Markovitch, Department of Molecular Genetics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

Abstract:

The fundamental question of how life came to be has drawn attention throughout history and in particular over the past decades. What led to the appearance of the first protocell in prebiotic Earth is an intriguing question. A metabolism-first approach for the origin of life entails that as early as replicating entities have emerged, they must have constituted relatively complex molecular networks, arising via spontaneous accretion of early assemblies of simpler organic molecules. In this scenario, faithful assembly reproduction directly stems from specific network attributes. The graded autocatalytic replication domain (GARD) quantitative model for life’s origin provides support for this scenario by allowing one to better understand the crucial network properties of the implicated molecular assemblies. GARD describes the homeostatic growth and evolution of an assembly composed of a repertoire of NG simple molecules, e.g. lipids, and suggests a possible pathway to the formation of a minimal protocell. The talk will briefly present GARD in the context of metabolism-centered approaches towards the origin of life, and describe some of our recent research, namely selection in GARD and how a balanced degree of self-catalysis and mutual-catalysis is required to best facilitate evolution.About Omer: B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Chemistry from the Hebrew University and is currently a Ph.D. student in the lab of Prof. Doron Lancet.

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