Scientists discuss 'RNA World' at ASU Origins workshop

New York Times science reporter Dennis Overbye wrote in a Feb. 21 story from a two-day workshop held at Arizona State University on the origins of life that the “modern version of the Garden of Eden goes by the name of RNA world.”

Organized by the ASU Origins Project and founding director Lawrence Krauss, the workshop was coupled with a public Great Debate: What is Life? held Feb. 12 at ASU Gammage that featured Sidney Altman, Paul Davies, Richard Dawkins, Leland “Lee” H. Hartwell, Chris McKay and J. Craig Venter.

Biologists, chemists, geologists, physicists and planetary scientists attended the workshop, which was “an effort to get people together who don’t normally talk to each other,” Overbye wrote.

Everett Shock, an ASU professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, referred to microbes in undersea vents when he was quoted saying: “Biosynthesis is profitable – it has to be; they live there.”

Also quoted was Nobel laureate Altman, an Origins Distinguished Visiting Professor at ASU. Overbye wrote about Altman’s comments on life: “Life is a very simple process…. It uses energy, it sustains itself and it replicates.”

Read Overbye’s coverage titled “A Romp Through Theories Into the Cradle of Life” at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/science/22origins.html.

Read more about the ASU Origins Project at http://origins.asu.edu.