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What Is Life?

Jan 28, 2019

Kate Adamala is a chemist at the University of Minnesota. In her Protobiology Lab, she is trying to build a synthetic cell from scratch.

 Protobiology Lab
 Adamala’s TEDx talk, “Life But Not Alive”


Jan 28, 2019

Donato Giovannelli is an assistant professor at the University of Naples “Federico II.” He travels to acid lakes and other extreme environments that are the closest thing today to what Earth was like when life began.

Giovannelli’s web site
Giovannelli on Twitter


Jan 28, 2019

All the life we know is the same: carbon-based, with DNA for genes. (Okay, except for RNA viruses.) But Steven Benner says it doesn’t have to be that way. Benner is a Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution.

Benner at FFAME


Jan 28, 2019

Jeremy England is a physicist at MIT. He has developed an influential theory of life as a way for matter to dissipate energy.

England’s MIT lab site
An article about England in Quanta


Jan 28, 2019

We don’t know how life got its start. But as more evidence emerges, explains astrobiologist Caleb Scharf, only a few theories are emerging as leading contenders. Scharf is the director of the Columbia Astrobiology Center at Columbia University.

calebscharf.com