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Prebiotic chemistry and the origin of life: back to the 1953 Miller experiment
12 March 2025, 3:00 pm–4:00 pm
UG Seminar Speaker: Antonio Lazcano, El Colegio Nacional and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Event Information
Open to
- All
Organiser
-
Marina Escalera Zamudio
Wednesday, 12 March at 3pm
Gavin de Beer Lecture Theatre
Prebiotic chemistry and the origin of life: back to the 1953 Miller experiment
A couple of weeks after Watson and Crick published their model of the DNA double helix in Nature, Stanley L. Miller, a young PhD student at the University of Chicago, reported in Science the results of an experimental simulation of the conditions of the early Earth with which he was able to demonstrate that in an atmosphere of methane, molecular hydrogen, ammonia and water vapour the abiotic synthesis of racemic mixtures of various protein amino acids, hydroxy acids and urea had taken place. This experiment, which marks the start of experimental simulations of prebiotic chemistry, was interpreted as a demonstration of the validity of Oparin's proposal, which since 1924 had suggested a heterotrophic origin of life. Using contemporary techniques, the reanalyses of the original samples led to the discovery a considerable diversity of molecules of biological importance that had not been reported by Miller in 1953 (Johnson et al., 2008, Science 322: 404). Miller’s report was published in the midst of the Cold War, and the availability of the Miller and Urey archives has made it possible to describe the complex scientific and even political environment in which the experiment was carried out and the way in which it was evaluated.
About the Speaker
Prof Antonio Lazcano
at El Colegio Nacional and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Bio:
Antonio Lazcano is Distinguished Professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where he works on the origin and early evolution of life. He has worked in prebiotic chemistry, analyses of meteorites and, more lately, on bioinformatics and the reconstruction of early stages of celular evolution. He is author or coauthor of about 200 research papers and chapters in books. He has written several boioks for the general public, including El Origen de la Vida, La Chispa de la Vida y La Bacteria Prodigiosa. He has been Visiting Professor or Scholar in Residence at the Univeristy of Habana, Autónoma de Madrid, Houston, Valencia, Orsay Paris-Sud, University of California, San Diego, Universita di Roma La Sapienza, Institut Pasteur, ETH Zentrum in Zurich and the A. N. Bakh Institute of Biochemistry of the USSR. For ten years he was part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute Oversee Committee, and President of the Gordon Research Conference of the Origins of Life, and twice President of the International Society for the Study of the Origins of Life, being so far the only Latin American scientist to hold this position. He has received three Honoris causa, one from the Universita di Milano (Italy, 2008), one from the Universidad de Valencia (Spain, 2014), and a third one in 2015 from the Universidad de Michoacan (Mexico). In 2013 the Third World Summit of Evolution granted him the Charles Darwin Distinguished Scientist Award, and in 2018 the College de France granted him the Guillaume Bude Medal. In October 2014 he was elected to the Colegio Nacional, the most Mexican important academic and cultural institution.