BMSE Seminar: "Recreating the Origin of Life with non-equilibrium mechanisms?"

Speaker

BMSE Seminar: Prof. Dieter Braun, LMU Munich, Physics. Host: Irene Chen

Date and Location

Friday April 21, 2017 11:00am to 12:00pm
Elings 1601

Abstract

Abstract: The Origin of Life is a fundamental, unsolved riddle of science. Life as we know it is a stunningly complex non-equi­librium process, keeping its entropy low against the second law of thermo­dynamics. It is therefore straightforward to argue that first living systems had to start in a natural non-equilibrium setting. We work on a chain of experimental evidence using non-equilibrium micro­systems which suggest that geological temperature gradients across porous rock should be able to trigger and drive early molecular evolution. Recently we explored phase transitions and symmetry breaking under replication to locally converge to homogeneous sequence species. We are optimistic to reach the combination of replication and selection of increasingly complex genetic molecules in geologically realistic settings.