Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #OriginsOfLife

Most recents (6)

Very excited to share that our work on Protein Nonrefoldability is out today in @J_A_C_S! #AlphaFold might be great at finding proteins' native structures... but turns out many proteins themselves are not! Short 🧵1/7
pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.10…
We developed a mass spec approach to probe the refoldability of the proteome. First we unfold & refold E. coli extracts, then use a protease to interrogate the structures of 'refolded' proteins. The resulting peptide fragments are sequenced by LC-MS & compared to native. 2/7
We found that most simple 'model' proteins are well-behaved and can refold on their own. But lots of multi-subunit assemblies, multi-domain proteins, and certain fold-types cannot fully refold intrinsically. 3/7
Read 7 tweets
On #InternationalWomensDay we'd like to pause and celebrate just a small slice of the enormous contributions to science women have made here at SFI.

Read the thread below for links to some of their own favorite research papers, and a few nominated by other SFI faculty members:
Read 21 tweets
What started with checking some assumptions in #originsoflife and IUPAC definitions, culminated in our universal framework for autocatalysis, now in @PNASNews: pnas.org/content/early/…. The unforeseen diversity and abundance of that phenomenon convinced me to do #systemschemistry.
There are some interesting consequences that I hope to discuss in the coming few days. Today, I will outline where it all starts: definitions in chemistry and their implications. (1/n)
Like compound names and atomic weights, terminology in chemistry is critically evaluated, developed and maintained by IUPAC. Definitions in chemistry are compiled in the Gold Book: goldbook.iupac.org. (2/n)
Read 80 tweets
A major step in origins of life research:

By analyzing the metabolic networks of primitive microbes, a team led by @jrcxavier incl. fmr SFI Prof Stuart Kauffman & fmr Grad Fellow @WanderingWim has identified fossils of autocatalytic sets older than both RNA and protein polymers:
Almost 50 years ago Stuart Kauffman suggested that theoretical constructs called autocatalytic sets might have been intermediates in the origin of biological complexity.

Their existence was the subject of decades of fierce debate...

More at @physorg_com:
phys.org/news/2020-03-m…
Now seems like a good time to suggest our free online #OriginsofLife course at @ComplexExplorer, currently in session with ongoing open enrollment:

🦠 origins.complexityexplorer.org
Read 3 tweets
#BigBang as the origin of time, space

#OriginoftheUniverse

1/ The universe began as an incredibly hot, very dense, single point in space roughly 13.8 billion years ago.

The entire observable universe was the size of a peach and had a temperature of over a trillion degrees.
2/ Cosmologists use sophisticated space missions, ground-based telescopes & complicated calculations 2 paint a clearer picture of th early universe &its formation.
3/ A key part of the evidence comes from observations of th cosmic microwave background, which contains the afterglow of light&radiation left over from the Big Bang.
Read 39 tweets
#UniverseOrigins (#OriginsoftheUniverse)

@gkarani1 @TTawonga

The Universe consists of 3 types of substance: normal matter, 'dark matter' & 'dark energy'. Normal matter consists of the atoms that make up stars, planets, human beings & every other visible object in th Universe.
@gkarani1 @TTawonga In the currently scientific understanding of the Universe, 70% is dark energy, 25% dark matter and 5% normal matter.
@gkarani1 @TTawonga 3/ Hydrogen is the most common element found in the universe, followed by helium; together, they make up nearly all normal or ordinary matter.

After defining what a universe is, lets move to how it all started.
Read 21 tweets

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