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Jack Szostak (Harvard/HHMI) Part 1: The Origin of Cellular Life on Earth

Science Communication Lab · 378.5K views · 2012-01-11 · 54:41

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Overview

Jack Szostak's lecture covers how cellular life could have arisen from chemistry on the early Earth, starting from the odds of life elsewhere in the galaxy. It is part of a series on protocells and the RNA world.

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Recommended as a clear, authoritative lecture series on plausible origin-of-life theories.

Recommended by 6 HN people across 6 months · HN mentions 2016–2021

Topics

Biology & biotechnologyEvolution & geneticsUniversity lectures & courses
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abiogenesisrna worldprotocellsjack szostakbiochemistry

What people said

lawpoop · 2016-07 · Strong recommendation

I personally am a fan of the RNA world hypothesis: [LINK] RNA can act as both a store of information, and as an enzyme catalyzing reactions. In this theory, certain sequences of RNA would be the original self-replicating molecules. Over time, variations in their replication would give rise to other enzymes for specialized reactions, and DNA as a pure-data store. Jack Szostak has done an excellent series of short videos on the theory, and he and his students have done a surprising amount of experiments to support the theory. [VIDEO]

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lovecg · 2021-01 · Recommendation

There are some plausible theories, like RNA randomly crystallizing on a suitable surface. Sooner or later a self-copying one just happened to crystallize by chance, and there was no going back. Fun lecture series: [VIDEO]

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martythemaniak · 2020-02 · Recommendation

I found it cute and quite meaningful. If you spend a good deal of time on Cellular Automata, Dissipative Structures and genetics these things really start to jump out at you. Here's a starter pack: Cellular Automata and Computation: [LINK] Origin of Life: [VIDEO] Dissipative Structures: [LINK]

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Sources

Video by Science Communication Lab, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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