Biography:

Nicholas V. Hud is professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his BS from Loyola Marymount University and his PhD from the University of California-Davis. The research in his laboratory is directed towards understanding the physical and chemical factors that control the structure, folding, and assembly of nucleic acids (i.e., DNA and RNA). In 2000 he proposed the "molecular midwife" hypothesis, which may explain the evolutionary origin of Watson-Crick base pairs in DNA and RNA. Hud currently serves as principal investigator of the National Science Foundations Chemical Bonding Center "Origins Project" and is a member of the Georgia Tech-Emory University Center for Fundamental and Applied Molecular Evolution.

Abstract:

Exploring the possible ingredients and early evolution in Darwins warm little pond

Charles Darwin once speculated, in a letter to his friend Joseph Hooker, about the possibility of life-like molecules spontaneously forming in a warm little pond. Although the chemical sciences were not sufficiently developed at Darwin's time for him to propose which molecules gave rise to life, Darwin clearly understood that life must have evolved from a far simpler self-replicating organism. The scientific advances in biology and chemistry over the past 150 years have now made it possible to explore, through model systems, the chemical origins and early evolution of life. As part of The Origins Project, a National Science Foundation Center for Chemical Innovation, our laboratory is working to determine what molecules were likely present on the prebiotic Earth and how these molecules could have spontaneously self-assembled into the first life-like polymers. Defining the molecular contents of model prebiotic reactions requires the development of new methods for the analyses of complex chemical mixtures, methods that should also prove useful for a wide range of chemical problems in research and industry. Determining how small molecules can spontaneously give rise to life-like polymers will require significant advances in our understanding of molecular self-assembly. Success in this endeavor would provide novel methods for polymer synthesis and replication, processes that could find many applications in materials science and biotechnology.