Herty Medalist adds life to chemistry outreach

As David Lynn researches how life first evolved, he is finding ways to explain the complex science to the public. Photo by Ann Borden.

By Carol Clark

Georgia chemist Charles Herty applied his research to transform the economy of the South, and his charisma to become a crusader for the profession. Herty traveled the nation, from 1915 until he died in 1938, delivering spell-binding talks and sparking conversations about the importance of chemistry among politicians, academics, businessmen and women’s clubs.

His legacy lives on through the Charles H. Herty Medal, awarded this year to David Lynn, the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Chemistry and Biology at Emory. The gold medallion, inscribed with “pro scientia et patria” (for science and country), is given annually by the Georgia Section of the American Chemical Society (ACS) to recognize outstanding work and service of a chemist or chemical engineer from the 11 states of the Southeast.

“The award celebrates the ability of scientists to give back to a community in many different ways. That’s what makes it so special to me,” Lynn says.

“David was selected for his role in advancing the understanding of chemical evolution, and for his service in public outreach for the chemical sciences. He’s a true leader in both areas,” says Rigoberto Hernandez, a chemist at Georgia Tech and current chair of the Herty Award Committee.

The medal, one of the oldest awards of the ACS, and the highest honor given by the Georgia Section, was presented to Lynn at the 79th Annual Herty Award Celebration in Atlanta.



As the honoree, Lynn's talk for the event was entitled “Towards Intelligent Materials,” describing how, during the past decade, our understanding of evolutionary processes and the tree of life has changed more than at any time since Charles Darwin.

“The rate at which technological advances and insights are emerging,” Lynn says, “now demands that we reconsider several of the most fundamental and longstanding questions of our time: What is life, where might it exist, and what forms might it take?”

The Lynn lab is uncovering processes of molecular self-assembly that could boost our ability to engineer living systems. Lynn has served as chair of chemistry at Emory since 2006, and helped establish the Center for Chemical Evolution, a collaboration between Emory, Georgia Tech and other institutions, funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA. The center is testing theories for how chemical reactions may have led to life emerging on Earth some 3.5 billion years ago. Harnessing these forces of evolution could help in everything from drug design to genome engineering.

“I’m a scientist first, and I’m most excited about the discoveries we’re making,” Lynn says. “But it’s equally important to find ways to capture the imagination of the public and explain the meaning of our new knowledge.”



Lynn considers Charles Herty an inspiring role model, both as a chemist and a science ambassador.

Born in Milledgeville in 1867, Herty was a research chemist at the University of Georgia and the University of North Carolina. In 1903 he developed a simple cup-and-gutter system to collect resin from pines without killing the trees. The invention is credited with saving both the southern pine forests and the turpentine and rosin chemical industry. Herty later developed methods to make paper from young, fast-growing pine trees, laying the foundation for a forest products industry in the Southeast.

During World War I, Herty served as ACS president and helped organize chemists to work on critical defense problems like German poison gas attacks. After the war, he lobbied for the expansion of the U.S. chemical industry, and played a key role in its development into an economic powerhouse.

“He used his expertise in chemistry to identify ways that he could contribute to the Southeast, and to the country, at a time when it was really needed,” Lynn says.

Lynn was born in North Carolina, but he spent the bulk of his career at the University of Chicago. He returned to his home region when he joined Emory in 2000.

“We’re entering a challenging time in science communication, because advances are happening so fast,” Lynn says. “Meanwhile, much of the nation, particularly the Southeast, is still struggling to understand scientific theories like evolution.”

Lynn used a $1 million award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to create a program for graduate students to teach freshmen about their research, so that they learn to explain their science while doing it.

He frequently taps the visual arts, music and theater to get across key concepts. “Group Intelligence,” in collaboration with Out of Hand Theater for instance, involves children and adults from all walks of life in a flash mob that simulates the interactions of molecules.

“I want to spark conversations about scientific theories like evolution in unexpected places, such as a concert hall, a shopping mall, an art gallery or a park,” Lynn says. “The idea is to use art to create dialogue about the beauty and science of the world that we inhabit.”

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'Where you have friction, changes can occur'

"Molecular diversity underpins both the structural intricacy of biology, as well as the complexity of our ideas and dreams," Lynn says.

By Carol Clark

"My brother liked to build models. And I liked to blow them up," recalls David Lynn, chair of Emory's chemistry department and the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Chemistry and Biology.

Their childhood experiments led to his brother's career as a building contractor and Lynn's as a groundbreaking chemist who is not afraid to make sparks fly. "The joke in the family is, it's a good thing that we no longer collaborate," Lynn says.

Lynn received the 2011 University Scholar/Teacher Award, selected by Emory faculty on behalf of the United Methodist Church Board of Higher Education and Ministry. He was recognized for his contributions to plant chemical biology, dynamic molecular self-assembly, chemical evolution and chemical education.

Lynn's chemical interests grew beyond explosions while he was a college student in North Carolina. "One day, I walked out of an organic chemistry class and I noticed a leaf on a tree branch that was hanging over a banister," he says. "I thought, ‘That leaf is coordinating billions of reactions going on all the time.' I remember marveling at that, and I've never stopped marveling."

That simple insight drove Lynn to focus on how order comes from chaos. After joining Emory in 2000, he helped establish the Center for Chemical Evolution, a collaboration between Emory, Georgia Tech and other institutions, funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA. The center is testing theories for how chemical reactions may have led to life emerging from Earth's primordial soup, some 3.5 billion years ago.

In 2002, he received the Howard Hughes Medical Institute award, worth $1 million. He used the funds to create a program called On Recent Discoveries by Emory Researchers (ORDER), a series of seminars where graduate students teach freshmen.

"Rather than just spending 24/7 in a lab, graduate students need to put their research into a broader context and learn to explain it to the public," Lynn says of the philosophy behind ORDER. An added benefit of the program is exposing freshmen to the possibilities of a career in academia, nurturing growth of the research community, Lynn says.

Lynn is also committed to helping the lay public understand the ongoing research into the evolution of life, and its relevance to modern-day life. Atlanta is an interesting location to focus on this goal, he says, since it is the epicenter of the debate between science and religion.

"This is where the friction is, and where you have friction, that's where changes can occur," he explains.

Both religion and science strive to make sense of the world, Lynn says. Rather than reciting facts that demonstrate evolution, Lynn believes that the best way to help people understand it is through compelling stories. He has helped pioneer collaborations between Emory scientists and playwrights, dancers and other artists. The recent performances of a science flash mob in downtown Atlanta, using a group of people to show how molecules evolve, is one example of this daring convergence of science and art.

"Sixty percent of Americans don't accept the tenants of evolution because they don't see them as part of their experience," Lynn says. "So somehow we need to find ways to create space for a dialogue. If there is one lesson that emerges from the study of chemical evolution, it is that molecular diversity underpins both the structural intricacy of biology, as well as the complexity of our ideas and dreams."

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New Atlanta NMR Consortium links resources of Emory, Georgia Tech and Georgia State

The Atlanta Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Consortium "lowers the activation energy to take advantage of partners’ expertise," says Emory chemist David Lynn.


NMR – nuclear magnetic resonance – is a powerful tool to investigate matter. It is based on measuring the interaction between the nuclei of atoms in molecules in the presence of an external magnetic field; the higher the field strength, the more sensitive the instrument.

For example, high magnetic fields enable measurement of analytes at low concentrations, such as the compounds in the urine of blue crabs, opening doors to understanding how chemicals invisibly regulate marine life. High-field NMR also allows scientists to “see” the structure and dynamics of complex molecules, such as proteins, nucleic acids, and their complexes.

NMR is used widely in many fields, from biochemistry, biology, chemistry, and physics, to geology, engineering, pharmaceutical sciences, medicine, food science, and many others.

David Lynn

NMR instruments, however, are a major investment. The most advanced units can cost up to up to millions of dollars per piece. Maintenance can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. The investment in people is also significant. It can take years of training before a user can perform some of the most advanced techniques.

For these and other reasons, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Georgia State University have formed the Atlanta NMR Consortium. The aim is to maximize use of institutional NMR equipment by sharing facilities and expertise with consortium partners.

Through the consortium, students, faculty, and staff of a consortium member can use the NMR facilities of their partners. The cost to a consortium member is the same as what the facility charges its own constituents.

“NMR continues to grow and develop because of technological advances,” says David Lynn, a chemistry professor at Emory University. To keep up, institutions need to keep buying new, improved instruments. Such a never-ending commitment is becoming untenable and redundant across Atlanta, Lynn says. Combining forces is the way to go.

Immediately, the consortium offers access to the most sensitive instruments now in Atlanta – the 700- and 800-MHz units at Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech invested more than $5 million to install the two high-field units, as well as special capabilities, in 2016.

Partners can gain access to Georgia State’s large variety of NMR probes. Solid-state capability, which is well established in Emory and advancing at Georgia Tech, will be available to partners.

Needless to say, the consortium offers alternatives when an instrument at a member institution malfunctions.

Beyond maximizing use of facilities, the consortium offers other potential benefits.

Anant Paravastu

“The biggest benefit is community,” says Anant Paravastu. Paravastu is an associate professor in the Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He is also a member of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB).

“Each of us specializes the hardware and software for our experiments,” Paravastu says. “As we go in different directions, we will benefit from a cohesive community of people who know how to use NMR for a wide range of problems.”

Paravastu previously worked at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, in Florida State University. That national facility sustains a large community of NMR researchers who help each other build expertise, he says. “We Atlanta researchers would benefit from a similar community, and not only for the scientific advantage.”

Both Lynn and Paravastu believe the consortium will help the partners jointly compete for federal grants for instrumentation. “A large user group will make us more competitive,” Lynn says. “The federal government would much rather pay for an instrument that will benefit many scientists rather than just one research group in one university,” Paravastu says.

“The most important goal for us is the sharing of our expertise,” says Markus Germann, a professor of chemistry at Georgia State. A particular expertise there is the study of nucleic acids. More broadly, Georgia State has wide experience in solution NMR. Researchers there have developed NMR applications to study complex structures of biological and clinical importance.

Germann offers some examples:
Structure and dynamics of damaged and unusual DNA
Structure and dynamics of protein—DNA and protein—RNA complexes
Structural integrity of protein mutants
Small ligand-DNA and -RNA binding for gene control
Protein-based contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging

“For me, there’s a direct benefit in learning from people at Georgia State about soluble-protein structure,” Paravastu says. He studies the structures of peptides; of particular interest are certain water-soluble states of beta-amyloid peptide, in Alzheimer’s disease. These forms, Paravastu says, have special toxicity to neurons.

Markus Germann

Paravastu also studies proteins that self-assemble. “People at Emory have a different approach to studying self-assembling proteins,” he says. “We have a lot of incentive to strengthen our relationships with other groups.”

“Different labs do different things and have different expertise,” Lynn says. “The consortium lowers the activation energy to take advantage of partners’ expertise.”

Even before the consortium, Germann notes, his lab has worked with Georgia Tech’s Francesca Storici on studies of the impact of ribonucleotides on DNA structure and properties. Storici is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences and a member of IBB.

Germann has also worked with Georgia Tech’s Nicholas Hud on the binding of small molecules to duplex DNA. Hud is a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a member of IBB.

“While collaborations between researchers in Atlanta universities is not new,” Paravastu says, “the consortium will help facilitate ongoing and new collaborations."

What will now be tested is whether the students, faculty, and staff of the partners will take advantage of the consortium.

Travel from one institution to another is a barrier, Lynn says. “Are people going to travel, or will they find another way to solve the problem? How do you know that the expertise over there will really help you?” he asks.

“The intellectual barrier is very critical,” Lynn says. “We address that through the web portal.”

The website defines the capabilities, terms of use, training for access, and institutional fees, among others. Eventually, Lynn says, it will be a place to share papers from the consortium partners.

“Like many things in life, the consortium is about breaking barriers,” Paravastu says. It’s about students meeting and working with students and professors outside their home institutions.

Already some partners share a graduate-level NMR course. For the long-term, Paravastu suggests, the partners could work together on training users to harmonize best practices and ease the certification to gain access to facilities.

“We can think of students being trained by the consortium rather than just by Georgia Tech, or Emory, or Georgia State,” Paravastu says. “By teaming up, we can create things that are bigger than the sum of the parts.”

Written by by Maureen Rouhi, Georgia Tech

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Chemists boldly go in search of 'little green molecules'

Extrasolar planet Upsilon Andromedae d, which lies in the habital zone of the Sun-like star Upsilon Andromedae A. The star, about 40 light years from Earth, is known to host three planets. Artist's hypothetical rendering by Lucianomendez, via Wikipedia Commons.

By Carol Clark

Jay Goodwin recalls the late-night 1969 moon landing vividly. His mother woke him up so he could watch Neil Armstrong step onto the lunar surface.

“It was a big deal. I still remember every detail on TV, and going outside to look up at the moon,” Goodwin says. He is now a chemist at Emory, working in the lab of David Lynn, a lead researcher for the NASA-NSF Center for Chemical Evolution.

Like a lot of kids who grew up in the heyday of the space race, Goodwin once dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Little did he know that as a chemist, he would be helping in the search for life beyond Earth.



At the request of NASA and the NSF, Goodwin and Lynn pulled together an international group of scientists in Washington this month to give their input during a workshop called “Alternative Chemistries of Life: Empirical Approaches.” They are now drafting suggestions to the government agencies for how to hone in on the search for other “Earths,” in light of the extraordinary number of exoplanets that powerful telescopes have unveiled.

“The discovery of exoplanets boosts the fascination of what may be out there,” says Goodwin, who prefers not to use the word “extraterrestrial.”

“We’re not looking for ‘little green men,’” Lynn explains. “We’re looking for ‘little green molecules.’”

In addition to synthesizing the input from the 40 scientists who participated in the workshop to draft the advisory report, Goodwin and Lynn will be among those presenting research at the NASA Astrobiology Conference 2012. Hundreds of scientists are gathering April 16-20 at Georgia Tech under the banner “Exploring Life: Past and Present, Near and Far.”

Galileo shows aristocrats of Venice how to use a telescope in a fresco by Giuseppe Bertini.

For centuries, advances in our understanding of the universe were measured at a glacial pace. From the realization that the Earth is not flat, to the daring proposition that the Sun was the center of our solar system, on up to the Big Bang model, the mysteries slowly unraveled.

Now things have speeded up considerably.

The heady era of manned space exploration may have temporarily plateaued, but powerful space-based telescopes like the one on NASA’s Kepler Mission are rapidly boosting our knowledge. Nearly 800 exoplanets have been discovered, including a handful in the habitable zones around stars, where liquid water is possible. It’s estimated that each of the 100 billion stars in our Milky Way harbor one or more planets, which heightens the possibility that our galaxy could be teeming with life in some form or another.

From Earth, we can observe transits of Mercury and Venus when they pass in front of the Sun. Kepler will observe the same phenomena in order to detect Earth-sized planets that are far beyond our solar system. Credit: Dana Berry, NASA Kepler Mission.

“We are not alone,” Lynn says. “It would be statistically impossible to not have other Earths out there, or rocky planets in habitable zones.”

But subtle factors, such as the tilt of the Earth’s axis and the presence of a moon, may be critical for the organization of life as we know it. So what is life exactly, and how would you know it if you saw it on an alien planet?

The more we learn, the more complex that question becomes.

Lynn’s work for the Center for Chemical Evolution is focused on understanding supramolecular self-assembly, and how life may have originated on prebiotic Earth. Meanwhile, the Human Genome Project is fueling research into the evolution of DNA and ways that man might generate “synthetic life” in a laboratory. And exploration of unique environments is uncovering examples of extremophiles, organisms that thrive in conditions that would be detrimental to most life on Earth.

Thermophiles, a type of extremophile that can exist in scathing heat, produce some of the bright colors of Grand Prismatic Spring, above, in Yellowstone National Park. Credit: Jim Peaco, National Park Service.

For the Washington workshop, Lynn and Goodwin invited a range of leading specialists working at the boundary of non-living and living systems. They included microbiologists, marine biologists, geochemists, synthetic chemists, atmospheric chemists, virologists and others.

“We had some interesting conversations,” Goodwin says. “One evening at dinner, a marine biologist told me how he had dropped a bucket into the water off a dock in Maine and cultured organisms from it that he had never seen before. He pointed out that we barely begun to understand what’s beneath our feet here, so how do we know what to look for out there?”

The word cloud above was created from the workshop notes. Click to enlarge.

During the next few months, Lynn and Goodwin will be continuing those conversations as they work on developing guidelines to set the tone for a whole new era in the exploration for life.

“The main goal of brainstorming at the workshop was to stretch our imaginations,” Goodwin says. “This project gives us all a chance to re-engage in the wonderment we felt as children looking up at the moon.”

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Prometheus: Seeding wonder and science

Michael Fassbinder plays a robot attendant on the spaceship Prometheus.

In Greek mythology, Prometheus paid a heavy price for stealing fire from Zeus and giving it to mortals. The story is a powerful cautionary tale about the rewards and risks of striving for scientific knowledge.

Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus,” opening June 8, ratchets up the theme by adding space travel and all the special effects of Hollywood. The movie’s premise, that extraterrestrial engineers seeded Earth with their molecular basis, is a fitting story for our times, says David Lynn, chair of chemistry at Emory.

Lynn, an expert in chemical evolution, is studying how life evolved from the “warm pond” of early Earth, some 3.5 billion years ago. “All the life that we understand now depends on liquid water,” Lynn says. “Ironically enough, the liquid water on earth probably came from extrasolar sources and accumulated on earth after the planet was forming. So this notion of having our planet seeded by water and by other nutrients or even building blocks of life is something that we’ve known about for a long time.”



In addition to studying how life evolved on Earth, Lynn heads a scientific team that is developing parameters for NASA to search for extraterrestrial life. Powerful telescopes have revealed an extraordinary number of exoplanets in our galaxy. But where should we start looking for life beyond Earth, and how would we know it if we saw it?

The crew in the movie “Prometheus” is also seeking extraterrestrial life, but they have the benefit of a star map discovered among the ruins of an ancient Earth civilization.

Our species has a history of imaging alien life forms, Lynn says, pieced together from dreams and whatever data is available at the time.

These stories often have value beyond entertainment. “They can be motivators for our imaginations, and for more science to try to understand our place in this universe that we inhabit,” Lynn says. "That's what makes the stories we have so important."

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The search for alternative chemistries of life heats up

Research into alternative chemistries of life has implications for everything from the health of humans to the health of Earth’s ecosystems. (NASA photo)

By Carol Clark

Ideas about directing evolution of life forms on Earth and finding life on other planets are rapidly morphing from science-fiction fantasy into mainstream science, says David Lynn, a chemist at Emory University.

“These areas of science are rapidly coming of age because of our increasing knowledge and advancing technology. It’s an exciting time. We’re on the threshold of answering fundamental questions including: What is life? Are there forms of life that we haven’t even yet imagined? Are we alone in the universe?”

A panel discussion, “Searching for Alternative Chemistries of Life on Earth and Throughout the Universe,” is set for Friday, February 13, at 3 pm, during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Jose. Lynn co-organized the panel with Jay Goodwin, an Emory research fellow and an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow.

In 2012, Lynn, Goodwin and four other scholars led the “Workshop on Alternative Chemistries of Life: Empirical Approaches,” supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They pulled together an international group of nearly 40 scientists working at the boundary of non-living and living systems for the Washington workshop. The group included microbiologists, marine biologists, biochemists, geochemists, synthetic chemists, atmospheric chemists, and virologists.

The resulting report, now available online, developed a set of research findings and next steps for exploring the concept of alternative chemistries.

The AAAS panel session will discuss many of the main ideas outlined in the workshop report, and the key question: How do we unravel the complex interplay of planetary, chemical and biological evolutionary networks, and what might we gain from the confluence?

“We’re at a critical point where we need to mobilize resources and bring together different research realms and take a holistic approach to this question,” Lynn says. Such research could have implications for everything from the health of humans to the health of Earth’s ecosystems as the planet undergoes climate change and a sixth mass extinction of life’s diversity, he adds.

Lynn is one of four speakers set for the AAAS panel. He will discuss his own research, which involves a bottom-up approach to exploring how organisms evolved from non-living to living systems.

Caltech geo-biologist Victoria Orphan will discuss taking a top-down approach to studying alternative chemistries of life by tracing the biological diversity back through time to its origins.

Biochemist John Chaput, from Arizona State University, will talk about his work at the interface of research into alternative chemistries of life, where the bottom-up and top-down approaches meet.

Astrophysicist Carolyn Porco, from the Space Science Institute, will discuss efforts underway to answer one of the most beguiling questions facing humankind: Is there life beyond Earth?

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How protein misfolding may kickstart chemical evolution

The origami of disease, and of life: Research into the abnormal folding of proteins related to neurodegenerative conditions is providing insights into how life may emerge from a chemical system.

By Carol Clark

Alzheimer’s disease, and other neurodegenerative conditions involving abnormal folding of proteins, may help explain the emergence of life – and how to create it.

Researchers at Emory University and Georgia Tech demonstrated this connection in two new papers published by Nature Chemistry: “Design of multi-phase dynamic chemical networks” and “Catalytic diversity in self-propagating peptide assemblies.”

“In the first paper we showed that you can create tension between a chemical and physical system to give rise to more complex systems. And in the second paper, we showed that these complex systems can have remarkable and unexpected functions,” says David Lynn, a systems chemist in Emory’s Department of Chemistry who led the research. “The work was inspired by our current understanding of Darwinian selection of protein misfolding in neurodegenerative diseases.”

The Lynn lab is exploring ways to potentially control and direct the processes of these proteins – known as prions – adding to knowledge that might one day help to prevent disease, as well as open new realms of synthetic biology. For the current papers, Emory collaborated with the research group of Martha Grover, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, to develop molecular models for the processes.

“Modeling requires us to formulate our hypotheses in the language of mathematics, and then we use the models to design further experiments to test the hypotheses,” Grover says.

Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is well-established – organisms adapt over time in response to environmental changes. But theories about how life emerges – the movement through a pre-Darwinian world to the Darwinian threshold – remain murkier.

The researchers started with single peptides and engineered in the capacity to spontaneously form small proteins, or short polymers. “These protein polymers can fold into a seemingly endless array of forms, and sometimes behave like origami,” Lynn explains. “They can stack into assemblies that carry new functions, like prions that move from cell-to-cell, causing disease.”

This protein misfolding provided the model for how physical changes could carry information with function, a critical component for evolution. To try to kickstart that evolution, the researchers engineered a chemical system of peptides and coupled it to the physical system of protein misfolding. The combination results in a system that generates step-by-step, progressive changes, through self-driven environmental changes.

“The folding events, or phase changes, drive the chemistry and the chemistry drives the replication of the protein molecules,” Lynn says. “The simple system we designed requires only the initial intervention from us to achieve progressive growth in molecular order. The challenge now becomes the discovery of positive feedback mechanisms that allow the system to continue to grow.”

The research was funded by the McDonnell Foundation, the National Science Foundation’s Materials Science Directorate, Emory University’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, the National Science Foundation’s Center for Chemical Evolution and the Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Additional co-authors of the papers include: Toluople Omosun, Seth Childers, Dibyendu Das and Anil Mehta (Emory Departments of Chemistry and Biology); Ming-Chien Hsieh (Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering); and Neil Anthony and Keith Berland (Emory Department of Physics).

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Teaching evolution enters new era

A hypothetical young planet with a soupy mix of potentially life-forming chemicals pooling around the base of rocks. Drawing by NASA.

From fall to spring, Lakshmi Anumukonda is a science teacher at a metro-Atlanta high school. But in the summer, she dons a lab coat and becomes a molecular time traveler.

“It’s exciting,” she said. “We’re looking at chemical bonding and primitive elements that were present on prebiotic Earth.”

Anumukonda is exploring the origins of life some 3.5 billion years ago through the Center for Chemical Evolution. Several dozen middle- and high-school teachers are involved in the virtual center (formerly known as the Origins Project).

The roots of the Center for Chemical Evolution go back nearly a decade, growing out of collaborations between Emory and Georgia Tech. The latest phase of the venture launched this week, fueled by a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation and NASA. The center now encompasses 15 laboratories at institutions including Emory, Georgia Tech, the Scripps Research Institute, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Jackson State University, Spelman College, Furman University and the SETI Institute.

The center’s mission “gives me goose bumps,” said Matthew Platz, incoming director of the NSF Division of Chemistry. Platz recalled his own sense of wonder in high school, when he learned about the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment. That was the first demonstration that Earth’s primordial soup favored chemical reactions that could lead to organic compounds.

“I thought that was incredibly cool,” Platz said. “For more than 40 years, I’ve been waiting to learn the next step: how these chemical reactions created life on this planet. Now we have the technology to take on that question.”

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As the university scientists seek to unravel how life began, the high school teachers are seeking ways to connect their students to the discoveries.

“I’m learning so much,” Anumukonda said. “Our high school textbooks talk about the prebiotic soup experiment and then stop there. After that, we have no idea about the recent research.”

A supernova explodes, below, scattering elements of which we and the Earth are made into space. Credit: Hubble Heritage Team, Y. Chu, NASA.

This summer, she worked alongside scientists in the lab of David Lynn, chair of chemistry at Emory. Lynn leads research into molecular self-assembly and other forces of evolution, along with the center’s education and outreach component.

Anumukonda used her lab experience to develop lesson plans for the self-assembly of molecules. This fall, her high school students will prepare samples of sodium acetate, and then take a field trip to Emory, where they can see through an electron microscope how their samples crystallize under different conditions.

“It’s wonderful to learn about the potential for real-world applications,” said Robert Hairston, another high school science teacher who spent much of his summer in Lynn’s lab. He was intrigued by how the forces of evolution could be harnessed to help in drug design and genome engineering.

“When I bring my students to Emory in the fall, I want them to have questions already in mind,” Hairston said. “They’re going to be amazed when they see the work that is being done.”

Emory seeded the educational component of the center through an “Evolution Revolution” symposium, teacher workshops, theatrical performances, visual arts and public talks to bring people together to discuss the topic.

“Emory is the perfect place to experiment with ways to improve the public’s understanding of evolution,” Lynn said. “We’ve taken the lead in addressing an issue that is sometimes charged and fractious in the Southeast, when it should be unifying.”

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Synthetic cell: A step closer to 'recipe for life'

The creation of the first self-replicating, synthetic cell by the J. Craig Venter Institute is being hailed as a milestone in the history of biology and biotechnology. In the journal Science, the researchers described the steps to make a bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome.

“It’s marvelous what they’ve done,” says Emory chemistry chair David Lynn. “They’ve taken a major step in defining a minimal set of chemical instructions for what we call living. This understanding, and the underlying technology, will certainly be extended and amplified into a synthetic biology. Their accomplishment also moves us that critical step closer to the definition of and a recipe for life. And that is profound.”

Watch the video, above, of Lynn explaining the discovery on CNN.

Lynn, professor of biomolecular chemistry, is working to understand supramolecular self-assembly, and how life may have originated on pre-biotic Earth.

“What Craig Venter and his team have done is taken the genome out of one organism and put it into another,” Lynn says. “Our group is coming at it from the opposite direction, of emergent life forms. Both approaches are trying to define the minimal chemical composition for life.”

Excitement over Venter's discovery should be tempered by caution, says Paul Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics. "Like any great scientific innovation, this has enormous promise and enormous peril," Wolpe said on ABC World News Tonight. "This may allow us to make more virulent viruses. This could unleash a bacterium on the world that has properties we didn't expect that could cause great disease and ecological damage."

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2010: A Science Odyssey

Crystal ball courtesy of Crystal Blue in Little Five. Photo by Carol Clark.

Anyone remember the Y2K scare? Fears that a fluke of technology would cause our entire digital world to crash with the 2000 calendar rollover were a mere distraction. As we enter 2010, we're hoping technology can save us from climate change.

The first decade of the 21^st century flew by, with changes coming at breakneck speed. It's a good time to peer into the crystal ball of research. eScienceCommons asked Emory scientists for their views on key advances during the past 10 years, and what may be in store by 2020.

"The most important thing that's happened is the recalibration of our perception of the world, and a clarification of the real challenges," says David Lynn, chair of chemistry. "That relates to everything from how we understand the origins of life, to the emerging focus on predictive health, and our increased understanding of the need for renewable energy."

Lynn cited the sequencing of the human genome and the identification of new planets as two events that shook the foundations of our social structure.

NASA photo

“The existence of other planets was predicted decades ago, but now we’ve accumulated hard evidence that we’re clearly not alone – our solar system is not the only one,” he says. “And what are we going to look for on these other planets that could allow life to emerge and evolution to start? I think that is where the fun begins.”

The fast pace of discovery contributed to a polarization of views on research, particularly in areas such as stem cells and evolution.

“The theme of our recent Evolution Revolution conference was that the world is changing very quickly, and we need to understand what that means so we can make better informed decisions,” Lynn says. “The important problems, and the fact that many are interconnected, have become more clearly defined. This clarification attracts people’s attention, and means the chance of finding viable solutions goes way up.”

Emory chemists are using “directed evolution” to study ways to reprogram bacteria to perform useful tasks, from fighting disease to producing renewable hydrogen fuel.

"We are taking principles that are central to evolution and probing them to use in different ways," Lynn says.  "It's a great time to be a scientist -- the sky is no longer the limit."

For neuroscientist Elaine Walker, one of the biggest breakthroughs was the growing awareness of genetic plasticity, or the idea that DNA is not necessarily destiny. "In the past, it was generally assumed that with only a few exceptions the individual genotype was fixed at conception, and that its effects on human health and disease were relatively fixed across the life span," Walker says.

In recent years, however, we've learned that genetic mutations in the form of copy number variations and microdeletions occur much more frequently than was previously assumed. "It now appears that these mutations can occur in embryogenesis, and that they can confer risks for autism, schizophrenia and a range of other disorders," Walker says.

Adding to this paradigm shift is our understanding of epigenetics: changes in the expression of genes due to a person's physical and psycho-social environment. "I think during the next decade, we're going to see more focus on applications of epigenetics for the treatment of everything from cancer to heart disease," says Victor Corces, chair of biology and one of the pioneers of the field.

We have also learned that the brain changes significantly across the life span, a finding that overlaps with genetic plasticity. "These developments have made our research much more complex," Walker says, "but they also provide us with much more optimism about our opportunities to prevent illness."

Walker is studying whether it might be possible to identify the changes in gene expression occurring in some young people that are causing a change in brain funciton that can put them at risk for psychotic disorders.

The theory of grounded cognition has revolutionized studies of the mind during the past decade, says psychologist Larry Barsalou, a leading researcher in this field. "Previously, it was argued that you could study the cognitive system in isolation. Now we realize that you cannot understand cognition without grounding it into the body and the sensory motor system and the world," he explains.

Watch a video of Barsalou explaining grounded cognition.

When you think about walking, for instance, your brain fires the same parts that operate when you are actually walking.

Research is increasingly showing the impact of social processes, culture, development and emotion on cognition, he adds. “I think that during the next 10 to 30 years, theories and research of cognition processes and social processes will be increasingly integrated.”

Everything needs to be studied from an interdisciplinary perspective, Barsalou says. "A big question is how to build programs that foster this kind of work. Psychology departments are becoming very strange beasts."

Deboleena Roy’s research spans women’s studies, philosophy, neuroscience and bioethics. During the past decade, the long struggle of women and minorities to be included in clinical trials began paying off, she says. Studies of biological differences can raise thorny issues about race and gender, she adds, stressing that we need to move forward with knowledge of the mistakes of history.

"People who are the subject of research need to be involved in generating the research questions," Roy says. "The day of the scientist in a white coat working alone in a lab is over. Scientists have to learn to connect to the broader community."

Biologists Nicole Gerardo and James Taylor are taking DNA sequencing to the next level, by tapping cutting-edge technology to analyze the sequence of a complex system, the world of agricultural ants.

“We’re entering completely new territory,” says Taylor, a computer scientist specialized in bioinformatics. “DNA sequencing technology is becoming faster and cheaper, but this transition is just happening.”

Within five years, he adds, the complex data sets he is mining through a grant will likely become much cheaper and more easily obtainable.

Psychologist Joe Manns, whose work focuses on the biology of memory, views the use of genetically engineered mice and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as transformational. While both these technologies were developed prior to the past decade, they matured and hit their stride during the past 10 years, he says.

He believes that the emerging technology of optogenetics – using high-speed optics to control genetically targeted neurons – will likely help fuel memory discoveries in the coming decade.
 
“Now we can put a wire into a brain and induce neurons within a region of the brain to fire, but we can’t control which neurons,” Mann says. “Optogenetics gives you anatomical precision, allowing you to target a specific neuron, along with temporal precision, because the pulses of light operate in milliseconds.”

The past decade saw wireless devices like iPods and iPhones become almost physical extensions of the human body. Google became a household word – both as a noun and a verb – as search engine technology connected our collective digital mind.

Search personalization, coupled with advances in wireless handheld devices and biometrics such as eye-tracking, will further speed changes in Web search, predicts Eugene Agichtein, who directs the Emory Intelligent Information Access Lab. “Ten years from now, computerized searches will look much different than they do today — you won’t be just typing words into a box on a screen,” he says.

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Dancing with the scientists

Will Chemistry Chair David Lynn wow the campus with an interpretive dance on DNA?

Sorry, folks, Lynn will not be performing. However, he did put his toe in the world of dance through collaborations with New York choreographer David Neumann and Seattle’s Lelavision Physical Music group.

Lynn and Neumann will hold a discussion on “Where Dance and Science Meet,” Thursday, Oct. 15 at 4 pm. This weekend, the science-art experiments take the stage in the form of Neumann’s “Big Eater” and “The Accumulation of Change,” combining Lelavision’s kinetic musical sculpture with Lynn’s research on molecular evolution.

Click here for details of all these events.

Watch a video of last spring's initial collaboration with Emory scientists and artists:

Doctorate's ORDER: Teach your research

In a recent class, graduate student Flora Anthony pushed younger students to help shape her research project on Egyptian artifacts, which she will present at a national conference. Photos, above and below, by Kay Hinton.

By Paige Parvin, Emory Magazine

A psychologist, a neurologist, an immunologist, and an Egyptologist walk into a classroom . . .

No, this isn’t the start of a joke. It’s an undergraduate course with the tantalizing title Blood, Brains, Death, and Disease, led by four graduate students with research interests in different academic fields. Part of a series of seminars called On Recent Discoveries by Emory Researchers, or ORDER, the course bridges the gap between undergraduates and graduate students and also between the arts and the sciences. Graduate student instructors collaborate across their disciplines to provide specific insight into how to conduct a project, walking the younger students step-by-step through their own research efforts.

The ORDER courses were conceived by David Lynn, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Chemistry and Biology, who was selected as one of 20 inaugural Howard Hughes Medical Institute professors to receive $1 million to bring scientific research to the undergraduate classroom.

“Graduate students represent the next level after undergraduate training in the career path of a scientist,” Lynn says. “Seeing that graduate students—who were themselves taking undergraduate classes only a few years earlier—are contributing to our scientific knowledge base is both very motivational to the undergraduate students and empowering for the teacher-scholars.”

This year, Lynn is partnering with Leslie Taylor, chair of the Department of Theater Studies, to lead the seminars. “David has been really interested in having scientists figure out ways to tell their stories,” Taylor says. “I’m here to talk about creativity—the idea of embedding creativity into teaching and thinking creatively about doing research. It’s not just A-B-C-D, but a series of leaps and hunches. And you need to be able to engage your audience with narrative.”

As the course unfolds, undergraduates in the class see firsthand how research is conducted and use this experience to lead a project of their own. They also learn about the career goals, life stories, and the research obstacles that the graduate students face.

“I was pleasantly surprised by the interest these students expressed in what I spend most of my time doing. The highlight of my year so far was when groups of my students created goofy songs that synthesized all of the information presented to them in a creativity workshop,” says Flora Anthony, a graduate student in Egyptology and one of the scholar-teachers. “In class, chemistry undergraduate students really helped push the boundaries of an art history inquiry.”

Anthony’s project is focused on evaluating a set of Egyptian artifacts to determine their authenticity, using both historical research and chemical testing processes supported by staff at the Michael C. Carlos Museum. The students were given a guided tour by Anthony and a walk-through of how artifacts are restored in the museum’s conservation lab.

They also got the opportunity to perform an experiment in a neuroscience wet-laboratory, guided by Jacob Shreckengost, a neuroscience graduate student. “I was amazed by the freshmen, who, after an introduction to a very complex area of spinal cord research, were able to independently devise some of the very experiments I had proposed and performed upon entering graduate school,” Shreckengost says.

Next, students visited capuchin monkeys at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, home to groundbreaking studies on the origins of fairness. Psychology graduate student Erin Robbins gave them the chance to participate in her human versions of these experiments to see how their concepts of fairness compare to those of children and adults in cultures like Samoa and Vanuatu.

The course ended with an up-close look at blood transfusions led by Justine Liepkalns, a scholar-teacher who is studying immunology. The class saw how blood is stored and used at the Emory Blood Bank and spoke to the director of the Center for Transfusion and Cellular Therapy and to the nurse in charge of patients treated for various blood ailments.

“Research has sudden twists and turns, just like our life stories,” Robbins says. “Post-college, I thought my interests and career choices were too diverse, but through research I came to see that there was a common theme.”

The research topics the undergraduates pursue for their own projects reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the class, ranging currently from obesity trends to Sanskrit to cell chemistry. But they are nearly always personally meaningful to the students, which is, says Lynn, what drives discovery.

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Emory chemistry making new space for mixing ideas

A glass-fronted atrium, leading out onto a park-like area, will serve as the new heart of chemistry and a hub for the campus science commons.

By Carol Clark

Chemists study the interactions of atoms in order to create new molecules. Emory chemists also like to experiment with the interactions of people and ideas, so they are creating space to foster new ways of teaching and research.

A $52 million expansion and renovation of the Sanford S. Atwood Chemistry Center, largely funded by the proceeds of a discovery of an HIV-AIDS drug made in the building, will transform the concrete exterior and boxed-in labs of the past into the sunlit foyers and communal spaces that reflect the department’s vision of its future.

“The building project sits right in the middle of Emory’s growing science commons,” says David Lynn, the chair of chemistry. “It was important to all of us that the architecture have an open, welcoming feel. This space is a great opportunity to pull the sciences together.”

“It’s really an expression of the collegiality of Emory,” adds Todd Polley, a materials scientist and the director of operations for the department. “Discoveries are being made at the interface of different disciplines, so we want to provide the best possible space for that interaction.”

The imposing concrete front of Atwood, facing onto Dickey Drive, will be replaced by a more welcoming facade.

Groundbreaking is set for May 14, the day after Commencement, with completion expected in early 2015. About 40,000 square feet of existing space in Atwood will be renovated, and 70,000 square feet of new space will be added to the existing 200,000 square-foot chemistry complex of Atwood and Cherry L Emerson Hall.

The imposing concrete walls of Atwood’s lecture hall, nicknamed “the bunker,” will be replaced by a more welcoming façade of windows and glass doors looking out on to Dickey Drive, next to the Psychology and Interdisciplinary Sciences building and across from the Math and Science Center.

The raised walkway along the west side of Atwood will be removed and replaced by a five-story, glass-fronted atrium. The atrium will house a library on the ground floor, facing out onto the grassy area between Atwood and Emerson. Instead of a traditional library, this open, interactive learning space will be filled with computer stations and conversational nooks to encourage collaboration. The library space and the park-like area of grass that it will open onto will serve as the new heart of the chemistry complex and as a hub for the campus science commons.

“In developing the concept, it was important for us to not only create great interior spaces, but also an open, transparent exterior so that people are drawn into those great spaces,” Polley says.

The view from a glass-walled faculty office into the new atrium.

The tiered lecture hall is being replaced by an interactive teaching space. Students will sit at round tables, surrounded by large video screens connected to computers. Each tableful of students will tackle problems as a group, mentoring and teaching one another. The solutions from each group can be projected onto the surrounding screens, so that the class as a whole can evaluate the different approaches and learn from them.

“It’s a simple concept,” Lynn says. “Rather than having students compete with one another, they collaborate in the same way we do research. The challenges we face have many facets and everyone brings new perspectives and ideas that are critical to the best solutions. The ways we teach science and do research are blending and becoming more seamless.”

Both the teaching space and research labs in the addition will have glass walls. “You’ll be able to look around and see the research actually happening,” Polley says. “It will give you context for why you are studying the subject.”

The long rows of sterile benches in the general chemistry lab will also get a makeover. The fume hoods will be outfitted with cameras, so that everyone can see demonstrations clearly, much like on a cooking show.

The entire second floor of Atwood can morph to create ideal spaces for poster presentations, seminars, guest lectures or other activities as they arise. Natural light and wood floors will warm up the atmosphere and many of the existing narrow hallways and opaque walls will be removed to create a more fluid and connected feeling.

Cooper Carry architecture of Atlanta worked closely with the department to plan the project, which is designed for certification by LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).

Watch the video about the Center for Selective C-H Functionalization, below, to learn more about how chemistry research and teaching are evolving.



The Atwood addition is another major milestone for a department that began at Emory in 1919, in what is now the North Callaway building on the Quadrangle, and moved into Atwood in 1974 when that building was completed.

During the 1980s, the first AIDS lab at Emory was established in Atwood. It was there that organic chemist Dennis Liotta, in collaboration with post-doctoral researcher Woo-Baeg Choi and biochemist Raymond Schinazi, developed Emtriva. The breakthrough antiviral drug for the treatment of HIV is now used by more than 90 percent of HIV/AIDS patients in the United States, and by thousands more around the globe.

The Cherry L. Emerson Center for Scientific Computation was established in the department in 1991, and moved into Emerson Hall in 2001 when that building was completed. The department is also home to the Emory Bio-inspired Renewable Energy Center and two national Centers for Chemical Innovation: The NASA/NSF Center for Chemical Evolution and the NSF Center for Selective C-H Functionalization.

“Chemistry is foundational to solving many of the most critical problems facing society, but these problems need to be viewed from differing vantage points,” Lynn says. “The expansion and renovation of Atwood is designed to capture new and creative ideas, while strengthening our connections to the rest of the University.”

About 60 percent of all entering Emory College students take a chemistry class during their first year. The department currently has 21 faculty members, 120 graduate students and 237 undergraduate chemistry majors. “We must be doing something right, because twice as many students choose to major in chemistry at Emory than at any of our much larger peer institutions,” Lynn says.

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Interstellar: Starting over on a new 'Earth'

The movie Interstellar opens in theaters at a time when Earth is facing major losses of biodiversity and ecosystems, says David Lynn, an Emory professor of biomolecular chemistry.

While humanity is challenged to find out what’s happening to Earth and how to make adjustments, we have also begun to realize that billions of Earth-like planets likely exist in habitable zones around the stars of our galaxy.

“In as little as 10 years, we could know whether we’re alone in the universe, whether there are other living systems,” Lynn says. “That’s an exciting prospect. It’s not clear necessarily that we’ll find out that there is intelligent life or not. That may be a lower probability, but that’s also possible.”

Much of the science in Interstellar is not accurate, and its vision of the future may not come true. And yet, it is still an important film, Lynn says, since its themes resonate today, during a critical time in our history.

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A new twist on an ancient story

“Evolution is a theory that we have more experimental evidence for than any other theory, and yet 50 percent of the population of the United States doesn’t accept it,” said David Lynn, professor of chemistry and biology, during a recent Creativity Conversation with choreographer David Neumann. “Maybe we’ve taken the wrong path in talking about evolution. In science we do a good job of conveying facts, but not a good job of telling the stories – what makes it human.”

Lynn’s research focuses on the origins of life. His desire to find new ways to explain science to the public inspired him to collaborate with Neumann, and the Seattle troupe Lelavision, as they developed dance performances. Their works, including Lelavision's "Warm Pond" (see photo), recently premiered in Atlanta.

“I was deeply influenced by the manner in which evolution operates and using those structures – contingencies and chance operations – in the structure of the dance,” Neumann said. “Sometimes when you utilize chance there’s a fantastic discovery.”

Watch a video of the conversation between Lynn and Neumann:


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Dancing with the scientists

The hunt for alien life forms, on Earth and beyond

Thermophiles, a type of extremophile, produce some of the bright colors of grand Prismatic Springs in Yellowstone National Park. Extremophiles may provide clues about how life formed in the extreme environmental conditions of early Earth. (Photo by Jim Peaco, National Park Service.)

Emily Conover attended the session at the recent annual meeting of the AAAS on "Searching for Alternative Chemistries of Life," co-organized by Emory chemist David Lynn. She wrote about the session's panel discussion for Science Magazine. Below is an excerpt from her article:

"Rather than searching for new forms of life on Earth or in the stars, other scientists study the question from the bottom up, looking for possible precursors of life. Chemist David Lynn of Emory University in Atlanta points out that misfolded proteins—like the those implicated in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's—show some similarities to life, namely that they can generate diversity in the different ways that they fold, and can undergo chemical evolution, in which those folded proteins are selected not genetically, but chemically. Such precursors could form complex chemical networks, which might be the foundation of radically different life elsewhere in the universe."

Read the whole article in Science.

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Chemists fine-tune ideas on how life evolved

By Carol Clark

An iPod can store a music library in a wafer-thin device that fits in your palm, providing a vast amount of data at your fingertips. But a human cell, only a few microns across, contains all of the information that made you. And even more remarkable, the first complex cells are thought to have somehow self-assembled from the fundamental building blocks of life.

The Accounts of Chemical Research (ACR) devoted its entire December issue to ideas about this self-assembly process, and how it could have enabled life to emerge from the chemical soup of early Earth and grow increasingly complex. By understanding this process, chemists hope to boost our ability to bioengineer living systems in ways that benefit us, just as computer engineers do with digital devices like iPods.

“Chemists have spent a long time breaking down cells and looking at their individual components,” says Emory chemist Anil Mehta. “Now we have a fantastic understanding of these parts. So how do we put them together? How can we, as chemists, get new complex networks to emerge from these components that communicate with each other? We are right on the verge of achieving this.”

The special ACS issue was edited by three Emory chemists – Mehta, Jay Goodwin and David Lynn, who are all also part of the NSF/NASA Center for Chemical Evolution – and a University of Utah chemist, Cynthia Burrows.

“We’re trying to figure out how to get from inanimate matter to living matter,” Goodwin says. “It’s one of science’s greatest challenges, and a problem the scientific community has been working on for centuries.”

The quest has heated up during the last decade, largely driven by genetic sequencing technology and our growing understanding of the minimum amount of information needed for evolution.

Fossils from Western Australia indicate that the earliest life may have been primitive bacteria going back about 3.4 billion years. “But it wasn’t until the ribosome appeared, around 3 billion years ago, that life exploded,” Mehta says. “Everything seems to have radiated from the ribosome.”

Ribosomes are essentially little machines that churn out proteins from nucleic acids. And proteins and nucleic acids are two biological macromolecules that learned to collaborate in encoding, transmitting and expressing genetic information.

In a paper included in the ACR issue, the Emory chemists use a digital-to-analog converter model to explain how the polymer cooperation of ribosomes may have helped the first dynamic functional networks reach the critical threshold for the emergence of cellular life.

Presumably, the polymers of proteins and nucleic acids evolved separately, and then found a way to join forces. “They both have strengths and weaknesses,” Goodwin says. “And together they make a system that takes advantage of the strengths of both, generating greater diversity and evolutionary potential.”

The nucleic acids are the digital part of the system, providing the ability to store vast amounts of information, like songs on an iPod, with crucial and exacting accuracy. Proteins are analog, delivering responsiveness and a continually variable range of functionality, such as the ability to communicate with internal and external networks, or play the songs. The ribosome functions like a digital-analog convertor that joins these two components into a single, dynamic system.

“We recognize that the march of molecular history likely had many pathways,” Lynn says. The aim of the special ACR issue is to bring together different areas of research on the problem, he adds. “Just as it takes a diversity in chemical composition for the evolution of life, it takes a diversity of ideas to fully comprehend the origins of that evolution.”

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Top image: iStockphoto.com.