No.16 Seminar ： Origin of Life and Synthetic Biology: The Expanding RNA World
- Hirohide Saito（The Hakubi Center）
- 2011/02/01 4:00pm
- The Hakubi Center (iCeMS West Wing 2F, Seminar Room)
- Japanese
Summary
I think the issue of the origin of life is one of the most important questions to be answered in the 21st century. Why we are here? Did we come from the universe?
What kind of chemical reactions or chemical networks were triggered to create the proto-cell? Unfortunately we will not able to witness this exciting event until a time machine is invented. However, we can investigate the “possible” events by employing experimental evolution techniques performed in the laboratory.
Today I will introduce the “RNA world”, because I am interested in this molecule…OK, many molecular biologists believe that the RNA molecule is one of the most important molecules that play a role in the early event of the evolution of life, because RNA can function as both information storage (like DNA) and enzyme (like protein). I have “evolved” this RNA molecule by using an “in vitro evolution system”. In my talk I will discuss this technique and explore the question “what is life?” from the molecular point of view.
Another topic for today is Synthetic Biology. Synthetic biology, with a promising outlook in biotechnology, is also very useful in understanding the self-organizing principle of biological molecules in life. Here, I will introduce my recent work related to “RNA/RNP synthetic biology” which aims to construct biological molecules and systems through bottom-up approaches.