TRR 235: Emergence of Life: exploring mechanisms with cross-disciplinary experiments

生命的出现一直是人类长期面临的科学和哲学问题之一。我们能详细解释一下生命是如何起源的吗？在理解生物系统和研究它们的方法方面取得了突破性的进展，现在使生命问题出现的中心方面更容易为科学方法所接受。通过结合地球科学、化学、理论、生物物理和生物化学的自下而上的实验室实验，我们的目标是提供连接普通物质到生命系统的路径的实验证据。我们的长期目标是通过实验演示一系列机制，从非生命的起点产生原始的生命系统。我们周围的生命是丰富的--植物、微生物、更大的动物。在早期的地球上，情况并非如此。早期地球的条件是什么？哪些化学物质可以作为合成地球和/或其他行星上的生命系统的前体？生命形式中最早的遗传物质是如何发展起来的？达尔文进化论是如何出现的？最早的代谢途径是什么？生命是如何如此生机勃勃地建立起来的？我们正在通过结合各种传统上独立的学科的专业知识，从多个角度解决所有这些问题。尽管地球上的生命可能在数十亿年的时间里缓慢出现，但在人类的时间尺度上，发现能够在实验室中出现自我繁殖和进化能力的机制组合是很有可能的。CRC/TR235建立在现有跨学科研究工作的基础上；研究复制分子的纳米科学、早期天体化学、合作合成的系统化学、非平衡系统的物理学和原始新陈代谢的生物化学。除了天体化学、化学、理论、生物物理学和生物化学外，我们还通过第一个资助期的几个项目，将跨学科的努力扩展到包括地球科学。通过两个私人投资机构和两个具有互补专业知识的博士生将两个学科/方法/小组联系起来的项目的串联性质证明，对我们复杂的项目来说是卓有成效的。在最初的三年里，我们能够扩展最初的问题，开发新的系统和方法，并缩小可能遵循的实验路径。与合作之初相比，我们现在有了一条更清晰的途径来解决非平衡地球条件如何在分子水平上触发达尔文进化的强大原理。

The emergence of life has been one of the long-lasting scientific and philosophical questions for humankind. Can we elaborate on how life originated? Ground breaking advances in understanding the biological systems and in the methods to study them, now make the central aspects of the emergence of life problem much more accessible to the scientific method. By using bottom-up laboratory experiments combining geosciences, chemistry, theory, biophysics and biochemistry, we aim to provide experimental evidence connecting the path from ordinary matter to living systems. Our long-term goal is to experimentally demonstrate a cascade of mechanisms producing a primitive living system from a non-living starting point.Life is abundant around us - plants, microbes, larger animals. This was not the case on early Earth. What were the conditions on early Earth? Which chemicals could serve as precursors for the synthesis of living systems on Earth and/or on other planets? How did the very first genetic material in life forms develop? How could Darwinian evolution emerge? What were the first metabolic pathways? How could life establish itself so robustly? We are addressing all of these questions from multiple perspectives by combining the expertise of a variety of traditionally standalone disciplines. Even though life on earth likely emerged slowly over billions of years, discovering the combination of mechanisms that enable the emergence of self-reproduction and capacity to evolve in the lab may well be possible on human timescales. The CRC/TR 235 was built on existing cross-disciplinary research efforts; studying the nanoscience of replicating molecules, the early astrochemistry, the systems chemistry of cooperative synthesis, the physics of non-equilibrium systems, and the biochemistry of primitive metabolisms. We were able to extend the cross-disciplinary efforts to include geosciences in addition to astrochemistry, chemistry, theory, biophysics and biochemistry with several projects in the first funding period. The tandem nature of the projects linking two disciplines/approaches/groups through two PIs and two PhD students with complimentary expertise proved to be fruitful for our complex undertaking. During the first three years, we were able to extend the initial questions, develop new systems and methods, and narrow down the possible experimental paths to follow. We have a clearer pathway now than we had at the beginning of the collaborations to tackle how non-equilibrium Earth conditions could trigger the powerful principle of Darwinian evolution at the molecular level.