About Us
Can we understand how life emerged on early Earth?
CRC 235 - Emergence of Life is a cross-disciplinary network, in the long-term, aiming to experimentally demonstrate a cascade of mechanisms producing life from ordinary matter. This collaborative effort is funded by German Research Foundation (DFG) and brings together several traditionally unrelated disciplines: astronomy, biology, chemistry, geoscience and physics as well as several renowned German universities and institutions: Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Technical University of Munich, Helmholtz Center Munich, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, University of Heidelberg and University of Stuttgart.
Projects are jointly designed and led by two principal investigators (PIs) with complementary expertise, supervising two graduate students. The students are connected through the Graduate Program designed to assist both the students and PIs in getting familiar with the often complex and multi-faceted details of the Emergence of Life question. This effort includes a student-driven exhibition at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
The experiments range from the origin of organic molecules, including their long-term survival in rocks or meteorites, volcanic scenarios of molecular synthesis, to the autonomous polymerization and replication of oligonucleotides, the origin of the genetic code, the role of freeze-thaw cycles, mechanisms to amplify chirality, connections to existing metabolic networks and the non-equilibrium chemical physics to form, divide and control protocells.
The first funding period of CRC 235 is July 1st, 2018 - June 30th, 2022.
