Cooking up a primordial cell: What can you find out (and what not) about the origin of life in the lab?
- Brötchen-und-Borussia
Life on our planet is probably 3.8-4 billion years old. Since then, it has developed an almost unbelievable diversity, from the slipper animal to the blue whale. But despite their different external shapes, all living things are surprisingly similar inside: They consist of membrane-enveloped cells that are equipped with a DNA genome, from which in turn various genes are read that enable survival in the environment. But how could cellular life arise on the early Earth and what conditions were presumably necessary for this? Is it possible to reproduce these conditions in the laboratory today and thus to reconstruct the origin of primordial cells, at least in outline? The lecture will present some exciting examples from current research on the origin of life.