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The origin of life as a planetary phenomenon

Journal Article

We advocate an integrative approach between laboratory experiments in prebiotic chemistry and geologic, geochemical, and astrophysical observations to help assemble a robust chemical pathway to life that can be reproduced in the laboratory. The...

Zoe Todd successfully defends thesis "From Astronomy to Chemistry: Origins of the Building Blocks of Life."

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Abstract: The circumstances surrounding the origins of life on Earth are still unknown, though substantial progress has been made recently. In general, the origins of life might have followed the path where first, simple feedstock molecules available in...

Sulfidic Anion Concentrations on Early Earth for Surgical Origins-of-Life Chemistry

Journal Article

A key challenge in origin-of-life studies is understanding the environmental conditions on early Earth under which abiogenesis occurred. While some constraints do exist (e.g., zircon evidence for surface liquid water), relatively few constraints exist on...

Selective prebiotic conversion of pyrimidine and purine anhydronucleosides into Watson-Crick base-pairing arabino-furanosyl nucleosides in water

Journal Article

Prebiotic nucleotide synthesis is crucial to understanding the origins of life on Earth. There are numerous candidates for life’s first nucleic acid, however, currently no prebiotic method to selectively and concurrently synthesise the canonical Watson...

UV Transmission in Natural Waters on Prebiotic Earth

Journal Article

Ultraviolet (UV) light plays a key role in surficial theories of the origin of life, and numerous studies have focused on constraining the atmospheric transmission of UV radiation on early Earth. However, the UV transmission of the natural waters in which...

On the origins of life's homochirality: Inducing enantiomeric excess with spin-polarized electrons

Journal Article

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The origin of life as a planetary phenomenon (pdf) Dimitar D. Sasselov, John P. Grotzinger, John D. Sutherland We advocate an integrative approach between laboratory experiments in prebiotic chemistry and geologic, geochemical, and astrophysical...

The Photophysics of Nucleic Acids: Consequences for the Emergence of Life

Journal Article

Absorption of ultraviolet (UV) radiation can trigger a variety of photophysical and photochemical reactions in nucleic acids. In the prebiotic era, on the surface of the early Earth, UV light could have played a major role in the selection of the building...

Shielding from UV Photodamage: Implications for Surficial Origins of Life Chemistry on the Early Earth

Journal Article

UV light has been invoked as a source of energy for driving prebiotic chemistry, but such high energy photons are also known to cause damage to biomolecules and their precursors. One potential mechanism for increasing the lifetime of UV-photounstable...

S. Furkan Ozturk

Person

Furkan completed his undergraduate degree in physics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkiye. During his time there, he focused on studying the theory of ultracold dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates using the Hartree-Fock Bogoliubov method. Later, in 2018...

Nitrogen Oxide Concentrations in Natural Waters on Early Earth

Journal Article

A key challenge in origins‐of‐life studies is estimating the abundances of species relevant to the chemical pathways proposed to have contributed to the emergence of life on early Earth. Dissolved nitrogen oxide anions ( ), in particular nitrate ( ) and...

A giant impact as the likely origin of different twins in the Kepler-107 exoplanet system

Journal Article

Measures of exoplanet bulk densities indicate that small exoplanets with radius less than 3 Earth radii (R_⊕) range from low-density sub-Neptunes containing volatile elements¹ to higher-density rocky planets with Earth-like² or iron-rich³ (Mercury-like)...