Will the origin of life ever be uncovered? | Kate Adamala, Addy Pross and Chrisantha Fernando
93Addy Pross, Kate Adamala and Chrisantha Fernando battle it out over the origins of life.
This is an excerpt from the debate ‘The origin of life,' filmed in September 2023 at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival in London.
Watch the full debate at https://iai.tv/video/the-origin-of-life?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=head-to-head
Humans have always marvelled at the wonders of life. But for nearly a century science has had an explanation for the immense variety of life forms on earth. Out of a primordial soup a random combination of chemicals generated the building blocks of life. Evolution did the rest. But might this account be mistaken? Despite decades of effort, biologists and biochemists have been unable to evolve living things from inorganic material. The emergence of the first cell and the development of complex life remain a mystery.
Is there something about the origin of life that means it will never be uncovered? Is the failure to account for life a threat to the whole evolutionary story? Or might we be able at some point to demonstrate the evolution of cells from inorganic material and the subsequent development of complex life forms? And if so where might this solution be found?
#TheOriginOfLife #CreationMyth #Evolution
Addy Pross is Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. His research interests lie in the physics-chemistry-biology relationship and the origin of life. His pioneering book ‘What Is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology’ has been published nearly a dozen languages.
Katarzyna (Kate) Adamala is a pioneering synthetic biologist and genetics professor at the University of Minnesota. Her groundbreaking work spans the realms of astrobiology, synthetic cell engineering, and biocomputing.
Chrisantha Fernando is a multifaceted scientist who began his journey in medicine at Oxford and transitioned into AI research. He earned an MSc in Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems at Sussex, followed by a PhD in simulating the origin of life with Eors Szathmary. Currently at DeepMind, he specializes in the intersection of evolution and learning in AI, with a particular interest in open-ended evolution.
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