A CREATIVE PLANET: HOW DID LIFE ON EARTH EMERGE?

Juli Peretó I2SYSBIO CSIC-UV
Mayo 24 a las 12:30h
Salón de Actos CIPF

Abstract: The transition from geochemistry to biochemistry took place on Earth some 4 billion years ago. How did the chemistry of the early planet organise itself into systems capable of obtaining matter and energy from the environment and making more copies of themselves? And how did these simple biological systems unfold to generate so much biodiversity? The difficulties of scientific study of the origin of life are enormous, since we do not know most of the details of what the planet was like at that time, and there are hardly any remains of the most primitive cells. The classic proposals of Oparin and Haldane, a century ago, put speculation to rest and opened the way for empirical studies. From the pioneering experiments of Miller and Oró to the most recent approaches of systems chemistry, a long road has been travelled that allows us to recreate today in the laboratory many processes analogous to those that could have occurred during the chemical origin of life on Earth. Admittedly, as in all research of a historical nature, we will never know exactly how chemistry came to life, but this does not prevent us from taking on one of the most colossal and exciting scientific challenges, an unfinished and never-ending scientific programme.

Juli Peretó is professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (University of Valencia) and full member of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. He was co-director-founder of the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio, a joint University of Valencia-CSIC centre) of which he is a member of the Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology group. His research interests include the evolution of metabolism, the concept of the minimal cell, the bioprospecting of inhospitable habitats and the history of ideas about the natural origin and artificial synthesis of life. He tries to teach metabolism with an evolutionary flair to biologists, biochemists and biotechnologists. He was Secretary and Vice-President of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL), of which he was elected Fellow in 2014. He is co-founder of the company Darwin Bioprospecting Excellence SL, a spin-off of the University of Valencia installed in its Science Park. Some of his recent books are “Synthetic Biology: from iGEM to the artificial cell” (Springer, 2014), co-authored with M. Porcar, “Science at the table”, a collection of articles on scientific gastronomy by F. Sapiña (Monografies Mètode, 2019), “Illuminating human evolution, 150 years after Darwin”, co-edited with J. Bertranpetit (Springer 2022), and “Un planeta creatiu: com va començar la vida a la Terra i com la fabricarem al laboratori” (Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 2023).