Deep Dive into the Origin of Life

An enduring mystery in science is how simple molecules assembled into the first cells. Helpful clues are found in the common features of their modern ancestors. For example, all known life forms build proteins according to their DNA. This process has a curious feature – it almost always starts with a sulphur-containing amino acid called methionine. This has no clear biochemical rationale, because in two thirds of cases this methionine is removed from the growing protein. This talk will outline how this universally conserved feature may be explained by methionine’s inherent chemical properties.

Lake Baikal is the world’s largest, deepest lake. It is an ancient lake, 30 million years old and known for its diversity, with many are endemic to the lake. Rarely do the accounts of the lake’s diversity include micro-organisms. Science is a human endeavour, its players coming from various backgrounds, having various temperaments, desires, and goals. I shall give an account of our Baikal quest, which was not just simply to document the diatom diversity, but to explain how it got that way and to address how some of the people before us approached this challenging task.