Origin and early evolution of life with William Martin | Reason with Science | Hydrothermal Vents

This episode is with William (Bill) Martin.
He is the head of the institute of molecular evolution at the University of Düsseldorf. With a career spanning over decades, he has made significant contributions to the field of molecular biology, particularly in the areas of evolution and symbiosis. Here we talk about the question of origin of life, importance of metabolism, prebiotic chemistry at hydrothermal vents, emergence of information, compartmentalization, and early evolution of cells.

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Timestamps:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:51 Charles Darwin's idea of warm little pond
00:04:19 Progress in the field of origin of life
00:13:46 Importance of energy for origin of life
00:20:40 Origin of life at the hydrothermal vents
00:30:45 Reaction of hydrogen and Carbon-DI-oxide at the hydrothermal vents
00:36:40 Crucial transitions for origin of cellular life
00:55:06 Emergence of information at hydrothermal vents
01:01:56 Importance of enzymes
01:06:25 Link between information and compartmentalization
01:08:24 Last Bacterial Common Ancestor (LBCA) and Last Archaeal Common Ancestor (LACA)
01:11:14 Importance of phase separation
01:16:10 Origin of life as an engineering problem
01:21:40 Life on exoplanets
01:23:57 Thank you!

Other conversations on origin of life:
#reasonwithscience #originoflife #biochemistry

[kamrupexpress]

Jitender, your channel is such a wonderful pastime for me. So much to learn. Though I am a mathematician by profession you can say that I am very obsessed with Charles Darwin and Evolution. I would be grateful if you could have Prof. Janet Browne on your shows. I also have a suggestion that these wonderful interviews can be put together into a book specially the ones on biology with providing a little explanation of the technical issues in the beginning of each chapter. I am sure it would be a best seller in the scientific community. You are doing a great job.
Joydeep Dutta
Professor
IIT Kanpur

[danielnarbett]

This is amazingly rich info source thank you!

[erikvictorreed]

Wow. For once, I truly believe Bill Martin has it--the origin of life. This makes so much sense. I particularly like the compartmentalization that happens within these vents: they're like pre-made cell membranes to get everything going in an isolated environment. Finally. I'm glad I lived long enough to see this solution. Wow, and I love the idea of two separate escapes that led to two separate types of life. So it was still a very singular rare type of event. Perhaps it only reached the escape peak twice.

Could there be "competition" within larger/later compartments: competition for compounds generated from lower compartments? Could the "evolution" and natural selection be occurring before cells escape? A "fight" for resources that led to optimizing the system while it's still within the vent compartments? And perhaps leading to lipid formation as some sort of optimization within the compartment for the sake of surviving there and using more resources. Almost like a buffer within the compartment: a buffer against the compartment itself, or perhaps against the relative acidity threatening to get into the structure from the outside? Wow, very interesting.

[exohumer]

Hi Jitender. I only came by chance to your video. In fact I had a long discussion with Chat-GPT on the origin of life and found there that prof. Bill Martin is investigating some aspects in University of Düsseldorf, where I was led to this video.
What I am really interested in, is if the forming of life is straight forward, why can we not see it happening every day at a hydrothermal vent as a continous process ? I mean, it should be a continous process and not one in a lifetime, since else entropie would always destroy anything build. Am I correct ?

[bruceonisko]

It seems impossible to me to get molecular evolution without having first evolved compartmentalization. If all the biochemicals are in a soup, even if a rare efficient machine like a DNA polymerase were to have arisen, would not that new machine be lost without some way to have a cell selected for? how can biochemical evolution occur without selection?

[TheCrossroads]

I think Darwin's original "warm pond" idea is simple and sweet. Modern biologists overthink the origin of life. Keep it simple.