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Published On October 23, 2014
BASIC RESEARCH
On the Origin of Life
Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak discusses how research on chromosomes led to current investigations into Earth's first organisms.
What forces came together to kickstart living organisms along the path of evolution? Perhaps no scientific riddle holds as much general philosophical interest.
On October 14, 2014, Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, discussed this question in light of his career in research. He discussed his groundbreaking work on telomeres—caps on chromosomes that keep their ends from fraying— that earned him the Nobel Prize in 2009, and current explorations of how those findings inform his investigations into how life originated on Earth.
“After working on this laboratory evolution for quite a few years, I started to get more and more curious as to how evolution got started all by itself on the early Earth,” says Szostak. “There are definitely common features of all forms of biological life that are puzzling and unexplained and I think it would be very satisfying to have some deeper understanding of why we are the way we are.”
To hear more from this fascinating lecture, click here.
From Mass General
Singular Exceptions Should primary care physicians be trained to spot unusual, medically important cases?
Silent No More Peter L. Slavin and Timothy G. Ferris discuss the need to end workplace violence in health care.
An Extra Pair of (A)Is Machine intelligence takes a big step into the clinic, with a technology that helps identify patients with an elevated risk of breast cancer.
Ending the AIDS Epidemic Since the early 1980s, AIDS has killed more than 35 million people worldwide. But researchers are determined to find better treatments, cures and preventions that many finally put an end to the epidemic.
For Some Clots, It Takes a Village Treatment of pulmonary embolisms may benefit from a team approach. But that model faces obstacles inside and outside the hospital.
Shining a Light on Depression Peter L. Slavin and Timothy G. Ferris highlight the need for new approaches to treating depression.
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