Keyword: origins of life

How could the first living systems learn to regulate themselves before the emergence of genes? In their new paper, Ben Shirt-Ediss, Arián Ferrero-Fernández, Daniele De Martino, Leonardo Bich, Álvaro Moreno, and Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo tackle this question through Araudia, a novel simulation platform for studying protocell evolution. They show that simple protocell ecologies, composed of metabolically […]

A new special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B—born out of a Santa Fe Institute workshop on the origins of life—brings together leading voices addressing the theoretical, experimental, and philosophical challenges of understanding how life emerges from nonliving matter. From Oparin and Miller’s pioneering prebiotic experiments to the frontiers of synthetic biology, […]

     Life’s complexity – even if we just stick to its basic core, the prokaryotic world – is overwhelming. This is not only due to the diversity of biomolecules and their amazing structural properties, or to the multiple and sophisticated transformations they undergo, but also to their dynamic organization and functional integration into cells. Let […]