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Exploring Pathways from Chemistry to Complexity in Dynamic Environments

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If you have a question about this talk, please contact Charles Walker .

Where and how did life arise? Modern metabolic networks are extremely complex, yet they must have emerged from much simpler chemistry operating in specific geological settings. Reconstructing this transition is challenging, since laboratory syntheses of metabolic building blocks rarely capture the dynamic environments of real planetary systems. In this talk, I will describe what we currently know about the geological contexts that could have supported life’s emergence and the chemical pathways that might have driven it. I will then introduce a kinetic framework for testing whether proposed prebiotic pathways remain viable under realistic geochemical conditions. This approach provides a way to assess the plausibility of prebiotic reactions and to explore how environmental dynamics can foster chemical complexity, offering insights into the earliest steps toward life.

This talk is part of the Hills Coffee Talks series.

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Online, via MS Teams LR6 CRUK Cambridge Research Institute Lecture Theatre

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