The emergence of heredity at the origin of life

The origin of life is one of the biggest unanswered questions in science. Not only is it a fundamental problem about the organization of matter, but it represents the very basis of biochemistry. The transition from prebiotically plausible chemistry to protocells capable of Darwinian evolution is the biggest gap in our understanding.

The RNA World hypothesis of how life may have emerged implies a dual role for RNA: propagating information, and carrying out functions. Such an RNA-based genotype-phenotype system could not have appeared spontaneously, and would have required a chemical mechanism for RNA replication before the existence of evolved enzymes. This seminar will present recent results that show how random-sequence templates may have been copied by nonenzymatic processes—an essential requirement for replication. 

These experiments use a custom next-generation sequencing pipeline to study mutations and sequence preferences during the copying reaction, and incorporate prebiotically plausible nucleotide activation chemistry and realistic mixtures of heterogeneous reactants. We will also consider the implications of these results for the development of more complex model experiments for the role of RNA during the origin of life.

Bio: 

Daniel Duzdevich is a molecular biologist studying the origin of life and astrobiology. His graduate research at the University of Cambridge and Columbia University used single-molecule techniques to probe nucleic acid dynamics. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Jack W. Szostak at Harvard University, and has continued as a Szostak laboratory affiliate at The University of Chicago. His main interest is the emergence of evolutionary processes at the dawn of life. Daniel was a Marie Curie Fellow of the EU at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany for the 2023-24 academic year.