The Scientific Quest to Understand the Origin of Life By Nicholas Hud, Georga Inst. of Technology

Nicholas Hud is Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Director of the NSF-NASA Center for Chemical Evolution. Prof. Hud received his undergraduate degree from Loyola Marymount University, his Ph.D. from University of California, Davis, and postdoctoral training at UCLA. Prof. Hud has studied the structure and function of DNA and RNA in living cells and viruses for twenty-five years. Over the past decade his research has become increasingly focused on questions concerning the chemical origins of life, particularly the origin and evolution of RNA.
 
 
Abstract.  The origin of life remains one of the most intriguing and challenging scientific problems of all time. Chemists seeking to understand the origins of biological molecules typically use what are known as the “bottom-up” approaches, which often involve laboratory experiments designed to reconstruct chemical reactions that took place on Earth around 4 billion years ago. Biologists are having great success with “top down” approaches, in which genetic information from living organisms is being used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cellular life. A common goal of these bottom-up and top-down approaches is to produce a continuous and scientifically plausible evolutionary path from small, nonliving matter to contemporary life, a path that would link the “prebiotic soup” with the first living cells. Recent advances made by chemists and biologists will be discussed, as well as what might ultimately be revealed about the origins and early evolution of life.