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Origin of life research in El Centro de Astrobiologia
El Centro de Astrobiologia, located near Madrid, Spain, is the only fully autonomous center of astrobiology in the world, with its own building, full-time faculty and students. It was also the first international partner of the NAI.
by Cesar Menor Salvan menorsc@inta.es
We could define prebiotic evolution as the first step in the emergence of life; it includes all the natural physicochemical processes that occur in a given planetary environment from its formation until the emergence of the first self-replicating system on which Darwinian processes could operate. In the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), we are interested in chemical...
March 16, 2009 / Written by: Cesar Menor Salvan -
Protocells Bridging Nonliving and Living Matter
Protocells Bridging Nonliving and Living Matter
MIT Press, 2008
Edited by Steen Rasmussen, Mark A. Bedau, Liaohai Chen, David Deamer, David C. Krakauer, Norman H. Packard and Peter F. Stadler
Protocells offers a comprehensive resource on current attempts to create simple forms of life from scratch in the laboratory. These minimal versions of cells, known as protocells, are entities with lifelike properties created from nonliving materials, and the book provides in-depth investigations of processes at the interface between nonliving and living matter. Chapters by experts in the field put this state-of-the-art research in the context of theory, laboratory work, and computer simulations...
February 13, 2009 / Posted by: Yael Kovo -
Open Questions on the Origins of Life
Workshop: OPEN QUESTIONS ON THE ORIGINS OF LIFE
SAN SEBASTIAN, SPAIN, MAY 20-23, 2009
Organizers: Pier Luigi Luisi and Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo
The overall idea behind this workshop is to tackle a number of key questions about the origin of life that still remain unanswered, attempt to clarify why it is so, and to discuss how to progress in our efforts to answer these questions.
In the field of the origins of life, as in many other fields, there is a tendency and a danger for all of us to keep...
January 30, 2009 / Posted by: Yael Kovo
Jim Kasting, the winner of the Oparin Medal at ISSOL'08
Jim Kasting's vitae
Vikki Meadows on Jim Kasting's research
