Jack Szostak Seminar in Worcester, December 4
Prominent abiogenesis researcher Jack Szostack will be presenting a seminar in Worcester on Thursday, December 4 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School as part of the Program in Molecular Medicine Series. The seminar, entitled "What can we Learn About the Origin of Life from Efforts to Design an Artificial Cell?", will begin at 11:00 AM. More info at the PMM Upcoming Seminars page.
If you haven't heard or don't remember, Szostack recently published a paper in Nature regarding his team's creation of protocells from non-living, simple organic chemicals that are capable of reproducing themselves, potentially recapitulating one of the earliest steps in the origin of life as we know it. I blogged a bit about it in June. Szostack's work represents a milestone in our understanding of how living things might well have gotten their start, and I expect that his talk will be tremendously interesting and informative to those of us interested in how it all began.
Now, the tricky part for me is that I'm supposed to be teaching lab on that day. Still, I should be able to get back in time to prep. This is a seminar I don't want to miss!
