Sprecher
Beschreibung
The enduring mystery of life's origins involves an important step of discerning the emergence of the first cells on the early Earth. Understanding this involves studying the fundamental components of a putative protocell and how they interact with each other, potentially resulting in the emergence of the first protocellular systems. In this backdrop, we at the COoL lab have been focussing on characterizing robust protocellular systems, in addition to also describing prebiotically minimally described amphiphilic systems, to gain a better understanding of the putative prebiotic amphiphilic landscape. Pertinently, these studies have involved studying the physicochemical properties of amphiphilic systems, to better understand their responses to prebiotically pertinent selection pressures. In the latter context, I will share our work on how we stumbled upon a protoamphiphilic moiety, whose spontaneous emergence in a prebiotically pertinent reaction also underscored the importance of exploring co-evolutionary processes (e.g. membrane assembly and peptide synthesis). All the understanding from our recent "amphiphilic sojourns" has led to renewed appreciation of how heterogeneity intrinsic to the prebiotic soup would have shaped the emergence and evolution of protocellular systems.
