The Origins of Life Community

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

In the origin of life community, among the aspects of life compartmentalization is sort of the easiest one to understand how it could have gotten going. So in some sense, the cells like little island and there's these bridges across the membrane. And that's really how things are beginning to get a bit more complicated. Yeah. Experimentally, it sounds easy, but experimentally, these are one of the toughest projects to run because lipids do form those liposomes one if you want them to. But actually working with them, handling them is kind of a pain in the lower back.

Scientists can’t quite agree on how to define “life,” but that hasn’t stopped them from studying it, looking for it elsewhere, or even trying to create it. Kate Adamala is one of a number of scientists engaged in the ambitious project of trying to create living cells, or something approximating them, starting from entirely non-living ingredients. Impressive progress has already been made. Designing cells from scratch will have obvious uses is biology and medicine, but also allow us to build biological robots and computers, as well as helping us understand how life could have arisen in the first place, and what it might look like on other planets.

Support Mindscape on Patreon or Paypal.

Katarzyna (Kate) Adamala received her Ph.D. working with Pier Luigi Luisi at the University of Rome and Jack Szostak at Harvard. She is currently an assistant professor of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development at the University of Minnesota. She is a member of the Build-A-Cell international collaboration, which brings together multiple groups to work on constructing artificial life.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.