Conveners
Session XII: Talks
- Emmanuelle J. Javaux (U Liège, BE)
- Zachary Cohen (U Washington, USA)
- David Catling (U Washington, USA)
Session XII: Q&A
- There are no conveners in this block
How life originated is how geochemistry became biochemistry. Consequently, knowing the environmental geochemistry prior to the origin of life is crucial. Here, I discuss the expected chemical composition of the early atmosphere and surface waters. In the Hadean, calculations show that chemically reducing atmospheres are inevitable consequences of large impacts and would have lasted millions of...
Carbonate lakes on the early Earth may have concentrated RNA precursors and membrane-forming fatty acids. Here, we show that natural carbonate lakes provide compatible conditions for nonenzymatic RNA assembly, ribozyme activity, and encapsulation by prebiotic membranes. Carbonate lakes contain at most ~1 mM divalent cations because carbonate salts of divalent cations are relatively insoluble....
Characterizing plausible and reliable traces of microbial life is crucial to untangle the co-evolution of Earth and the biosphere. It may also inform on plausible conditions for life to emerge and evolve on a habitable planet or moon, and how to detect life beyond Earth. The origin of life (OoL) was probably possible since 4.3 billion years when Earth became habitable. Although the Earth rock...
