Unveiling the Mystery of Life: A Chemist’s Journey
As a young child, Sijbren Otto harbored a fascination for the history of life, dreaming of one day unearthing dinosaurs as a palaeontologist. However, his path led him to a different realm – chemistry in the laboratory. Little did he know that this deviation would bring him closer to unraveling one of life’s greatest mysteries.
In 2010, Otto serendipitously discovered synthetic molecules capable of self-replication, sparking a quest to push the boundaries of their lifelike behavior. “We’ve been enhancing their abilities to not only replicate but also metabolize and evolve,” Otto explains.
What is truly astonishing is the revelation from Otto’s experiments hinting at life as a novel form of matter, a concept proposed by Addy Pross, a chemist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. “It serves as a link between the physical and biological realms,” Pross asserts.
The exploration of the physical processes underlying life offers a glimpse into its origins and essence. It is becoming evident that Darwinian evolution might just be a fragment of a broader evolutionary principle applicable to both living and non-living entities. This realization prompts researchers to contemplate the…
