- Wed Jan 22 (room reservation 16:00 JST [=UTC+09:00]), ELSI-1 105 Mishima Hall [Seminar] ELSI Seminar - Sudha Rajamani Title: ROLE OF PREBIOTIC MOLECULAR HETEROGENEITY IN THE EMERGENCE AND EVOLUTION OF BIOMOLECULES ON THE EARLY EARTH Abstract: How life originated on our planet continues to be an enduring and endearing mystery. The latter is especially true for us at the COoL Lab @IISER Pune where our goal is to understand how first cellular life emerged on the early Earth. Delineating the various steps of this process involves studying the fundamental components of a putative protocell, both, independently and when they interact with each other. In this regard, we have been characterizing the outcome(s) of different prebiotically pertinent molecular interactions that impinge on reactions, which would have resulted in the emergence of informational/catalytic polymers and protocellular entities. The results we have gleaned thus far underscore the importance of accounting for prebiotic soup heterogeneity while discerning life’s origin and for characterizing co-evolutionary processes (e.g. oligomer synthesis and membrane assembly), with fundamental implications for the emergence of functional protocellular systems. Speaker: Prof. Sudha Rajamani, Professor, IISER Pune Speaker bio: Sudha Rajamani got her PhD in Biochemistry from the National Institute of Immunology at New Delhi, India. She then did her postdoctoral research at the FAS Centre for Systems Biology at Harvard University, and at the Deamer lab at the University of California in Santa Cruz, where her research interests in Astrobiology, and especially in the origins of life, were nurtured. She is currently a Professor in the biology department at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune, India. Sudha is the principal investigator of the Chemical Origins of Life (COoL) lab, where she and her group, along with her collaborators, use tools from diverse areas of biology, chemistry, geochemistry and physics, to delineate the processes and niches that would have allowed for the transition from non-life to life on the early Earth. She is also passionate about Astrobiology education, both, formally and via science outreach programs. In particular, she feels strongly about mentoring school and university students in their pursuit of Astrobiology as a career. Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/96428712238 Host: Tony Z. Jia - Fri Jan 24 (room reservation 14:00 JST [=UTC+09:00]), ELSI-1 207 Seminar Room B [Study Group] Metabolism Hour [Reading Group] Weekly meeting where we discuss... you guessed it: metabolism. Hosted by Longo lab, open to anyone interested in metabolism.