J. Tze-Fei Wong
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Antonio Lazcano
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

About this Book

With the accelerating pace of genomic analysis and space exploration, the field of prebiotic evolution and astrobiology is poised for a century of unprecedented advances ahead, and there is a need for textbooks for students. The authors of this book, aware of the difficulty of covering the multifaceted subject by any single author, have decided to combine their efforts to provide a suitable book for beginning students from varied disciplines. The book stemmed from a meeting on Basic Questions about the Origin of Life at the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture in Erice, Sicily in October 2006, where Pier Luigi Luisi laid out a balanced program to approach the subject. The present book basically follows that program. The many authors have produced most thoughtful, authoritative and readable chapters on their areas so that the student may grasp the background, objective and progress of the major research foci in the field.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
J. Tze-Fei Wong

2. The Minimal Cell
Markus Pech and Knud H. Nierhaus

3. Planetary Astrobiology–The Outer Solar System
François Raulin

4. Mars, the Astrobiological Target of the 21st Century?
Patrice Coll and Fabien Stalport

5. Comets and Astrobiology
Hervé Cottin and Didier Despois

6. Meteorites and the Chemistry that Preceded Life’s Origin
Sandra Pizzarello

7. Chirality, Homochirality, and the Order of Biomolecular Interactions
Sandra Pizzarello

8. The Primitive Earth
James F. Kasting

9. Biomolecules
J. Tze-Fei Wong

10. The Dawn of the RNA World: RNA Polymerization from Monoribonucleotides
under Prebiotically Plausible Conditions
Pierre-Alain Monnard

11. Ribozymes and the Evolution of Metabolism
Randall A. Hughes and Andrew D. Ellington

12. Precellular Evolution: Vesicles and Protocells
Pasquale Stano and Pier Luigi Luisi

13. Split Genes, Ancestral Genes
Massimo Di Giulio

14. Genetic Code
J. Tze-Fei Wong

15. Root of Life
J. Tze-Fei Wong