Topics in Origins of Life Research

Harvard FAS

This semester we will lay out a plausible story of how life emerged on Earth from chemistry that led to the synthesis of molecular building blocks, which in turn self-assembled to form cells. I will do that by reviewing two recent papers – the required reading for this course [1,2]. Each week we will also use, as necessary, relevant papers to the topics to be discussed. The list of topics is enclosed in the syllabus, as are some of the papers.