The Origin of Life on Earth and the Design of Alternative Life FormsThis article was transcribed from a presentation delivered by Professor Szostak at the Molecular Frontiers Symposium on Tailored Biology at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, May 2017. It is published here in MFJ with permission from Professor Szostak.

摘要

To understand the origin of life on Earth, and to evaluate the potential for life on exoplanets, we must understand the pathways that lead from chemistry to biology. Recent experiments suggest that a chemically rich environment that provides the building blocks of membranes, nucleic acids and peptides, along with sources of chemical energy, could result in the emergence of replicating, evolving cells. The broad scope of synthetic chemistry suggests that it may be possible to design and construct artificial life forms based upon a very different biochemistry than that of existing biology.