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TRR 235:  Emergence of Life: exploring mechanisms with cross-disciplinary experiments

Subject Area Physics
Biology
Chemistry
Geosciences
Term from 2018 to 2023
Website Homepage
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 364653263
 
The emergence of life has been one of the long-lasting scientific and philosophical questions for humankind. Can we elaborate on how life originated? Ground breaking advances in understanding the biological systems and in the methods to study them, now make the central aspects of the emergence of life problem much more accessible to the scientific method. By using bottom-up laboratory experiments combining geosciences, chemistry, theory, biophysics and biochemistry, we aim to provide experimental evidence connecting the path from ordinary matter to living systems. Our long-term goal is to experimentally demonstrate a cascade of mechanisms producing a primitive living system from a non-living starting point.Life is abundant around us - plants, microbes, larger animals. This was not the case on early Earth. What were the conditions on early Earth? Which chemicals could serve as precursors for the synthesis of living systems on Earth and/or on other planets? How did the very first genetic material in life forms develop? How could Darwinian evolution emerge? What were the first metabolic pathways? How could life establish itself so robustly? We are addressing all of these questions from multiple perspectives by combining the expertise of a variety of traditionally standalone disciplines. Even though life on earth likely emerged slowly over billions of years, discovering the combination of mechanisms that enable the emergence of self-reproduction and capacity to evolve in the lab may well be possible on human timescales. The CRC/TR 235 was built on existing cross-disciplinary research efforts; studying the nanoscience of replicating molecules, the early astrochemistry, the systems chemistry of cooperative synthesis, the physics of non-equilibrium systems, and the biochemistry of primitive metabolisms. We were able to extend the cross-disciplinary efforts to include geosciences in addition to astrochemistry, chemistry, theory, biophysics and biochemistry with several projects in the first funding period. The tandem nature of the projects linking two disciplines/approaches/groups through two PIs and two PhD students with complimentary expertise proved to be fruitful for our complex undertaking. During the first three years, we were able to extend the initial questions, develop new systems and methods, and narrow down the possible experimental paths to follow. We have a clearer pathway now than we had at the beginning of the collaborations to tackle how non-equilibrium Earth conditions could trigger the powerful principle of Darwinian evolution at the molecular level.
DFG Programme CRC/Transregios
International Connection Sweden

Completed projects

Co-Applicant Institution Technische Universität München (TUM)
Participating Institution Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemie (MPIB)
 
 

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