Events
Professor Nick Lane - October 9th, 4pm in Chen 100
We are so excited to be hosting Professor Nick Lane in the second week of October! Nick Lane is both a professor of evolutionary biochemistry and an award-winning author of multiple popular science books on the origins of life.
CaltechASM - Caltech's student chapter of the American Society for Microbiology - and CEMI are not only hosting him for a lecture, but also for multiple smaller events where students and postdocs can meet with him. Please join us for his lecture and an open coffee hour, and fill out the linked form below if you're interested in attending lunch or dinner with him!
Lecture: Monday, October 9th at 4 PM in Chen 100. Details below!
Journal Club: Monday, October 9th at 10:30 AM in Chen 240A. Please read the attached paper and we will discuss it together before the talk.
Coffee hour: Tuesday, October 10th at 3PM in the Morgan Library in Kerchkoff (2nd floor) - open to all, but let us know your interest below so that we can get a head count
Lunches: Tuesday, October 10th, 12-1 PM and Friday, October 13th, 12-1 PM at the Athenaeum
Dinner: Monday, October 9th, 6-8 PM, Celestino
Indicate your interest in attending events with Nick Lane here!
Lecture details:
A bioenergetic basis for the origin of life and the emergence of consciousness in cellsNick Lane, Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry
Co-Director, UCL Centre for Life's Origin and Evolution (CLOE)
Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London
All life is powered by electrical charges on membranes, most fundamentally the protonmotive force. This universal conservation suggests that membrane bioenergetics arose early in evolution. I will argue that life began in deep sea hydrothermal systems entailing labyrinths of cell-like pores where CO2 fixation was driven by a geologically sustained protonmotive force. Experimental work suggests that this far-from-equilibrium setting drove a spontaneous protometabolism with a topology equivalent to the universal core of metabolism. Patterns in the genetic code show that genetic information emerged from direct interactions between amino acids and nucleotides. I will present experimental and theoretical modelling work that together elucidate the emergence of biological information in autotrophic protocells. Finally, I will touch on the importance of electrical membrane potential and associated electromagnetic fields for integrating metabolism at the level of bacterial cells. I will show that electrical membrane potential integrates information on cell state in relation to the environment on a moment-by-moment basis, giving a ‘stream of consciousness' in bacteria. I will conclude with evidence that anaesthetics interact with respiration in modern mitochondria through a spintronic mechanism, offering a window into our own consciousness.
Nick Lane is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at UCL. He was a founding member of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research and is Co-Director of the UCL Centre for Life's Origins and Evolution. His research is about how energy flow has shaped evolution from the origin of life to the emergence of complex traits such as sex, death and consciousness. Prof Lane has published more than 100 papers in top journals including Nature, Science, Cell and PNAS. He is best known for his five books on energy and evolution, including most recently Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death, which Science described as "A thrilling tour… Masterful." He has received many awards for his work, including the 2015 Biochemical Society Award and the 2016 Royal Society Faraday Prize.
Speaker Series - January 27th - 4-5pm - Hameetman 220
Kate Radford (ASM President) presents information about Caltech ASM at the CEMI Poster Session, held in October 2022.
See the poster here! Caltech ASM Poster - CEMI Poster Session October 2022
CaltechASM hosts Microbe Mixers, a casual get-together on campus event with the goal to talk science - with snacks! Join our newsletter to stay up to date on when the next one is occuring. Come out to enjoy some sunsnine, food, and start collaborations with others across campus.
