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2024 Mar 20

Professor Jun Korenaga (Yale) “Hadean geodynamics and early Earth environments

4:30pm to 5:30pm

Location: 

Haller Hall - Geological Museum - 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA

Abstract: 

 

Reconstructing Earth history during the Hadean defies the traditional rock-based approach in geology. Given the extremely limited locality of Hadean zircons, some indirect approach needs to be employed to gain a global perspective on the Hadean Earth. In my talk, two promising approaches are discussed jointly. One is to better understand the solidification of a putative magma ocean and its consequences, as the end of magma ocean solidification marks the beginning of subsolidus mantle convection. The other is to better constrain the...

Read more about Professor Jun Korenaga (Yale) “Hadean geodynamics and early Earth environments
2024 Feb 21

Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar (University of Toronto - Department of Earth Sciences) "Insights into Habitability and Astrobiology from Exploration of Earth Analogue Environments"

4:00pm to 5:30pm

Location: 

Haller Hall, 24 Oxford Street

For more information about Professor Lollar, please see her website.

 

Abstract:

 

 

Insights into Habitability and Astrobiology from Exploration

of Earth Analogue Environments
Barbara Sherwood Lollar

Dept of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto, ON, M5S 3B1, CA and Institut de Physique du
Globe de Paris (IPGP), Université Paris Cité, 1 rue Jussieu, 75005, Paris, France
barbara.sherwoodlollar@...

Read more about Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar (University of Toronto - Department of Earth Sciences) "Insights into Habitability and Astrobiology from Exploration of Earth Analogue Environments"
2022 Dec 14

Professor Kate Adamal (University of Minnesota) "From not so simple a beginning: engineering synthetic cells"

4:00pm to 5:30pm

Location: 

Haller Hall - Geo Museum - 24 Oxford Street

Abstract:

The earliest history of life included a series of transition from non-living matter, through prebiotic synthesis, towards the living Last Universal Common Ancestor. Our work focuses on the immediately-pre-life stage of evolution, when complex chemistry became simplest biology. 
We create synthetic minimal cells that exhibit some key properties of life, without being entirely alive. Those cells express proteins from nucleic acid genomes inside phospholipid liposomes, representing the boundary between prebiotic and Darwinian evolution.
Our synthetic cells...

Read more about Professor Kate Adamal (University of Minnesota) "From not so simple a beginning: engineering synthetic cells"
2022 Apr 13

Professor Greg Fournier (MIT) "How old are Bacteria?"

4:00pm to 5:30pm

Location: 

Haller Hall, Room 102 in the Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street

Abstract:

 

The age of extant bacterial diversity and the planetary biosphere is an important astrobiological question, but remains poorly constrained by the paleontological and geochemical records.  The oldest diagnostic microfossils are only ~2 Ga, providing a younger-bound on major diversifications of Cyanobacteria, but not actively constraining deeper divergences in the bacterial Tree of Life.  Unambiguously biogenic stromatolites date back to ~3.4 Ga, and can provide a younger-bound on bacterial diversifications, even if not diagnostic for any...

Read more about Professor Greg Fournier (MIT) "How old are Bacteria?"
2021 Dec 15

Origins Prize Lecturer: Professor John Sutherland (MRC Lab. Molecular Biology - Cambridge, UK) “Origins of the RNA-Protein World - Lost in Translation?”

4:00pm to 5:30pm

Location: 

Haller Hall, Room 102 in the Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street

Abstract: 

The RNA-protein double act at the heart of biology raises several intriguing origins questions that can be addressed by prebiotic chemistry. Beyond the obvious ‘which came first?’, one can also wonder about the extent to which chemistry shaped the process of translation according to the genetic code.

 

In this lecture I will describe some mixed hydrogen cyanide-hydrogen sulfide chemistry...

Read more about Origins Prize Lecturer: Professor John Sutherland (MRC Lab. Molecular Biology - Cambridge, UK) “Origins of the RNA-Protein World - Lost in Translation?”
2021 Feb 08

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