Garchinger Maier-Leibnitz-Kolloquium: Non-equilibria to recreate the emergence of Life in the lab

by Prof. Dieter Braun (Systems Biophysics (LMU München))

Thursday 8 Dec 2022, 16:15 → 17:15 Europe/Berlin

Lecture Hall, ground floor (west) (LMU building, Campus Garching, Am Coulombwall 1)

For life to start, a simple mechanism with a minimal number of molecules must have implemented robust Darwinian evolution. To be able to gain sequence information, such molecular evolution had to be driven and hosted by non-equilibrium settings of an early planet. We have combined polymerization and templated ligation from very mildly activated RNA with 2’3’-cyclic phosphates [1], with wet-dry cycling at heated air-water interfaces [2]. The oligomerization operates at elevated pH 9-10 without added salts at temperatures between 4-40°C and creates oligomers of all four bases with 15-20% yield. It operates in a water-poor “dry” state. Replication is possible with templated ligation under similar dry, but also liquid conditions. For the latter, we confirmed highly base-selective templated ligation with 25% yield. If catalysts are found to recycle the hydrolytically opened cyclic phosphate at the 2’ or 3’ back to its cyclic form, the reaction will recycle and reactivate its sequences and can operate indefinitely. Strand separation will be provided by the micro-water cycles in a thermal gradient setting or by dew-dry cycling.
We will show experimental results how feeding, vesiculation and protein expression can be offered in the same setting. The findings offer a most simple, physically driven molecular evolution scenario for the emergence of life from only two molecules, implemented in an early Earth volcanic setting under a CO2 atmosphere.
[1] ChemSystemsChem doi.org/10.1002/syst.202200026 (2022)
[2] Nature Physics doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01516-z (2022)

Hybrid access via ZOOM:    
https://lmu-munich.zoom.us/j/98457332925?pwd=TWc3V1JkSHpyOTBPQVlMelhuNnZ1dz09
Meeting ID: 984 5733 2925
Passcode: 979953

kolloquium-08-12-22.pdf