Origins Institute Lecture Series with Antonio Lazcano: The RNA World

There are many definitions of the RNA World. The origin and the manifold roles of RNA in extant biology need to be addressed. Antonio Lazcano from the El Colegio Nacional, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico will discuss the insights RNA viruses and viroids provide into structure and evolution of early cellular genomes prior to the emergence of DNA genomes.

Antonio Lazcano Lazcano Araujo has contributed "The Origin and Early Evolution of Life: Did It All Start in Darwin's Warm Little Pond?" to Evolution Since Darwin and published "Historical Development of Origins Research" in Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology: The Origins of Life

In 2009-2010 he was selected UC MEXUS-CONACYT Visiting Scholar fellowship at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and during his time at the laboratory of Professor Jeffrey Bada, Araujo conducted research on the chemical synthesis of organic compounds under primitive Earth conditions, as part of an ongoing project to understand prebiotic evolution and the conditions leading to the origin of life on our planet. Seeking to close the gap between prebiotic organic syntheses and the initial stages of biological evolution, he also critically analyzed models of the development of metabolic pathways in early diverging microbes using available genomic databases.