iCOOL mission
The Center for Integration of the Origins of Life (iCOOL) seeks to integrate chemical sciences with evolutionary theory. To achieve this, we are developing conceptual and experimental models of chemical evolution focusing on selection, exaptations, mutualisms, and creativity in complex chemical systems. One of our telescopes to the distant past is the translation system, which originated before the Last Universal Common Ancestor. We believe that humankind will learn to understand, recapitulate, and technologically exploit chemical progressions analogous to those that led to the formation of biopolymers on ancient Earth.
Chemistry to Proto-ribosome
iCOOL is developing alternative models of the origins of life, in which extant biochemistry is the product of prolonged and creative chemical evolution. We propose that biological molecules, before life, formed mutualisms, and were recursively sculpted, selected and exapted via non-Darwinian co-evolutionary processes. These models make the unsettling prediction that biochemistry has lost many vestiges of prebiotic chemistry. However, they are experimentally accessible, for example by wet-dry or freeze-thaw cycling. These models require a challenging integration of chemistry and evolutionary theory.
Proto-ribosome to LUCA
iCOOL also investigates the critical transition from chemical evolution, marked by the origins of biopolymer backbones, to adaptive biological evolution, ultimately leading to the Last Universal Common Ancestors. During this pivotal phase, the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology emerged with the development of the proto-translation machinery. A video on the origins and evolution of the ribosome describes a model of ribosomal evolution by accretion by Drs. Petrov and Williams. The model provides insight into structures and functions of ribosomes before the Last Universal Common Ancestors.
Bioinformatics Tools
iCOOL uses bioinformatics to inform experiments. A suite of bioinformatics tools facilitate our understanding of the structure and sequence of translation-associated RNAs and proteins. RiboVision2 is a visualization and analysis tool for the simultaneous display of multiple layers of information on the sequence and structures of ribosomal RNA. ProteoVision is for ribosomal protein data. Both tools provide rapid retrieval, analysis, filtering, and display of data and allow download of user-generated images of publication quality.
NASA PCE3 RCN
iCOOL is part of the NASA Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments (PCE3) Research Coordination Network (RCN), one of five RCNs within the Astrobiology Program. PCE3 is focused on investigating the delivery and synthesis of small molecules under the conditions of the Early Earth, and the subsequent formation of proto-biological molecules and pathways that lead to systems harboring the potential for life. iCOOL also supports the LIFE RCN.
NASA Astrobiology
Astrobiology at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an interdisciplinary field that studies the origins, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe. It focuses on three big questions: How does life begin and evolve? Does life exist elsewhere in the Universe? How do we search for life in the Universe? The Center for Integration of the Origins of LIfe (iCOOL) focuses on how life begins and evolves. iCOOL is funded through a NASA Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science (ROSES) grant.