The Origin of Life and the riddle of "Prebiotic" Chemistry

Séminaire IPAG de Juan-Carlos Fontecilla (IBS, Institut de Biologie Structurale, Grenoble), jeudi 8 mars 2018 à 11h00, salle Manuel Forestini IPAG

A great variety of organic molecules are relatively abundant in outer space and are easily made using spark-tubes and a reducing atmosphere. This has led many to conclude that life started in a primordial soup rich in "prebiotic" molecules. During my seminar I will argue that, based on reaction selectivity, bioenergetics and stereochemistry this proposition appears unlikely. Instead, conditions favorable to the emergence of life could have been possibly present in oceanic alkaline hydrothermal vents where the first biomolecules were synthesized from simple precursors.