Convergence: RoL - RCN for Exploration of Life's Origins

Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe NM

Investigators

Abstract

Few questions in biology are as profound, or have persisted for as long, as the question of how life originated. The study of life's origins has provided no shortage of possible ways in which life may have started. However, the field has been stuck for the last hundred years in debates over which idea is right, and little progress has been made. By integrating views, backgrounds, and tools from many types of scientists, the proposed Research Coordination Network will develop new ways of looking at the origin of life that combine different scientific perspectives. Multiple meetings and specialty workshops, will encourage scientists from many areas of science to collaborate. This will allow young scientists to create new views that merge ideas from outside their own discipline. In addition to the advances in theory and experimentation that will arise from this network there will be a massive open online course and other outreach activities that will provide the public with a clearer view of how life originated. This Research Coordination Network will move beyond debates such as which came first RNA or cellular metabolism. The project promotes Convergence by bringing together researchers from astrobiology, the study of artificial life, evolutionary biology, systems biology, bioinformatics, paleobiology, chemistry, geochemistry, planetary sciences, biochemistry, and statistical physics to explore how the pieces of the theory we have on origins of life fit together. The approach is to move from understanding how building blocks of life originated to understanding how the building blocks assembled into life. The focus is shifted from the pieces to how they become organized. The Santa Fe Institute will provide home base for a series of core meetings along with topical working groups that will explore the rules under which life is assembled. The steering committee of this network represents an enormous diversity of disciplines and institutions and will look to expand that diversity of views.