Tuesday, 19 July, 2016
Professor Dieter Braun leads new CAS research group
International research group “Recreating the Origin of Life”
The Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) at LMU Munich has granted Professor Dieter Braun, professor of biophysics and CeNS board member, a new “CAS Research Group” starting in 2017. The grant will give him the opportunity to work on experimental research on the Origin of Life in cooperation with international guest scholars. At the same time, it will strengthen the local Origin of Life Munich (OLIM) initiative. OLIM is a local transdisciplinary research network devoted to the experimental study of the Origins of Life with members from LMU, TUM, and the MPIs.
Modern Origin of Life research draws on insights from the fields of astronomy, geology, chemistry, physics and last but not least, biology. New experiments attempt to elucidate both the astronomical and geological conditions that made the formation of the first biological molecules possible. At the center of the problem are the non-equilibrium processes which enabled the first cycles of evolution based on replication, mutation and selection. The CAS Research Group will strive for a deeper understanding of early evolution and call for astrogeobiological experiments on a solid interdisciplinary basis. The group will collect astronomical and geological data and combine them with genetic biological insights to create an experimentally testable scenario based on non-equlibrium thermodynamics. Dieter Braun’s group has made advancement of the hypothesis that porous rock could drive, accumulate and host prebiological molecules, driven by chemistry and a heat flow. They have followed this idea along experimentally testable steps from geology to life. With the CAS Research group and OLIM researchers, consorted efforts will be made to bridge the gap from the geological boundary conditions of the early earth to molecular systems which can undergo Darwinian evolution and then create - along the lines of the contemporary biological evidence - the first cells and complex life. The CAS Research group will be unique for this interdisciplinary approach since it allows to highly strengthen collaborative connections both within Europe and worldwide. Within the CAS Research group, the international collaborators can explore connections with the growing group of PIs from OLIM, offering them a wide range of intellectual possibilities when coming to Munich.
The Center for Advanced Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) is a forum for intensive interdisciplinary academic exchange. It promotes cooperation between outstanding researchers from various LMU departments and fosters participation of visiting scholars in research and academic life at LMU. Founded in the course of the Excellence Initiative, CAS's purpose is not only to support the research activities of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität but also to emphasize the concept of a university in its broadest sense – that is, as a "universitas" which covers all disciplines.