Chemical Evolution: Physics of the Origin and Evolution of Life: Proceedings of the Fourth Trieste Conference on Chemical Evolution, Trieste, Italy, 4-8 September 1995 / Edition 1

by Julian Chela-Flores, Franïois Raulin

Overview

Leading researchers in the area of the origin and evolution of life in the universe contributed to Chemical Evolution: Physics of the Origin and Evolution of Life. This volume provides a review of this interdisciplinary field. In 35 chapters many aspects of the origin of life are discussed by 90 authors, with particular emphasis on the early paleontological record: physical, chemical, biological, and informational aspects of life's origin, instrumentation in exobiology and system exploration; the search for habitable planets and extraterrestrial intelligent radio signals.
This book contains the proceedings of the Fourth Trieste Conference on Chemical Evolution that took place in September 1995, in which scientists from a wide geographical distribution joined in a Memorial to Cyril Ponnamperuma, who was a pioneer in the field of chemical evolution, the origin of life, and exobiology, and also initiated the Trieste Conferences on Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life. This fourth Conference was therefore dedicated to his memory.
Audience: Graduate students and researchers in the many areas of basic, earth, and life sciences that contribute to the study of chemical evolution and the origin of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780792341116
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	07/31/1996
Edition description:	1996
Pages:	414
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.36(d)

Table of Contents

Section 1. General Overview.- Cosmic evolution, life and man.- Experimental retracement of terrestrial orign of an excitable cell: Was it predictable?.- Section 2. Origins.- Cosmology: The Universe in Evolution.- From cosmic formation of chiral bioorganics in interstellar dust to comet seeds of life’s origins: Are 1025 chances enough?.- Strategies for the search of life in the universe.- Section 3. From Geophysics to Prebiotic Chemistry.- Age of the Isua supracrustal sequence of West Greenland: A possible repository for early life.- Clays as natural catalyst in prebiotic processes.- Role of transient and stable molecules in chemical evolution.- Lightning associated to Archean volcanic ash-gas clouds.- Section 4. Physiochemical Aspects.- Evolutionary, kinetic and thermodynamic aspects on the bioenergetics of inorganic pyrophosphate (PPi) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP).- Mineral metal sulphur clusters as a testbed for studies of evolutionary continuity.- Thermal peptides as the initial genetic system.- Origin of nucleic acids.- Origin of fatty acids.- Section 5. Biophysical Aspects: General Problems.- Oxygen and the rapid evolution of life on Mars.- First steps in eukaryogenesis: Physical phenomena in the origin and evolution of chromosome structure.- Biological aspects of the origin of life: Open questions in eukaryogeneis.- A putative living fossil of the RNA world is likely to be of recent origin.- Thermodynamic nature of the biological evolution: the model and the reality.- Boltzmann dynamics on the primitive earth about 3.8 billion years ago.- Thermodynamic and kinetic properties of prebiological open systems.- Section 6. Biophysical Aspects: Biomolecular Chirality.- On the determination of the physical origin of homochirality in life.- Possible role ofphosphoryl group excitation in chemical evolution.- Basic models of chemical evolution of life: The minimum evolving system.- Ab initio calculation of molecular energies including parity violating interactions.- Section 7. Evolutionary Aspects.- Prebiotic chemical evolution and the Darwinian Revolution.- La Grande Galerie de l’Evolution of Paris: The only museum in the world entirely devoted to biological evolution.- Section 8. Information Theory.- New approaches in mathematical biology: Information theory and molecular machines.- Information-processing genes: Molecular biology in the computational paradigm.- Section 9. Communication.- Progress in searches for extraterrestrial intelligent radio signals.- SETI from the moon. A case for a XXIst century SETI-dedicated lunar farside crater.- Section 10. Instrumentation in Exobiology and Mars Exploration.- In situ epxloration of Titan and cometary nucleus: implication for planetary exobiology.- Looking for the homochiral signature of life: the SETH Cigar.- Strategy for the detection of bioorganic compounds on Mars.- Martian soil analysis.- Section 11. Special Session.- 1. Excerpts from letters read at the Conference;.- 2. Speakers from scientific academies and foundations of which Cyril Ponnamperuma was a member.