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Special issue of journal Life commemorates origin of life researcher David Deamer’s 80th birthday

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And all papers are open access.

Research on how and where the origin of life might have occurred on the Earth some four billion years ago is slowly undergoing a paradigm shift. It is becoming increasingly clear that fresh water hydrothermal conditions may be more conducive than salty sea water for processes leading to the emergence of evolving protocell populations. Central to that shift has been the work of Professor David Deamer, who is now a Research Professor in the Department of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Throughout his academic career, Deamer has had unusually broad research interests, primarily focusing on membrane biophysics and nucleic acid chemistry but also exploring the burgeoning field of astrobiology.

Editors, “Special Issue “Themed Issue Commemorating Prof. David Deamer’s 80th Birthday” at Life

The issue includes an interview with Deamer, who researched the question for fifty years. Here are the articles.

See also: Suzan Mazur interviews an origin of life society president David Deamer.

Hat tip: Pos-darwinista

Comments
Is this DD’s conclusion?
I would guess we know maybe 1% of what is necessary to understand how life can begin. The other 99%… well, wherever you look in origins of life research, there are vast gaps of ignorance that are within the reach of anyone who wants to try their hand. I identified some of these gaps in Chapter 11 of my book, Assembling Life [1]. For example, how did life become homochiral? How were polymers synthesized non-enzymatically for life to begin? How did metabolism begin? How was light captured in primitive versions of photosynthesis? Where did ribosomes come from and how did the genetic code emerge? As David Cornwell, my PhD advisor used to tell me, quoting from the Book of Matthew, “The harvest is plentiful, the workers are few.
This seems like discouraging news for Dr Cronin and Dr Szostak, doesn’t it? :)jawa
May 31, 2020
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Yes, let's rearrange those deck chairs again...Fasteddious
May 31, 2020
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