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"Einstein: His Life and Universe"   

Domain Protolife: Link Between Molecular and Biological Evolution

By Aristotel Pappelis, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and Sidney W. Fox, University of South Alabama, Mobile.

Cosmogenesis began with the Big Bang and proceeded through physical, chemical, and biological evolution. The emergence of life from thermal proteins (endogenously ordered polyamino acids), protocells (self-organized thermal proteins with attributes of life), and metaprotocells (protocells that can use light to synthesize ATP, can conduct nonribosomal protein synthesis, and can synthesize polynucleotides) yielded the prokaryotic cells of organisms in the Domains Bacteria and Archaea. Plants, animals, fungi, and protists (organisms of eucaryotic cells in the Domain Eucarya) evolved from the latter. We propose that protocellular activities, including protein-directed genetic information that led to a more modern DNA-based information system, are the link between chemical and biochemical unity of protolife and modern life, that this wholeness is part of nature encompassed by cosmogenesis, and that the mind of man can comprehend this unity. These experimental observations have been shown to relate to areas of human expression (science, philosophy, religion, etc.).

Abstract from a symposium sponsored by the Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, ACS 207th NATIONAL MEETING, San Diego, March 14-17, 1994

US Scientist Credited with Discovering Life's Origins

Obituary of Sidney W. Fox from Mobile Register, Aug. 13, 1998

Obituary of Sidney W. Fox from Southern Illinoisan, Aug. 18, 1998

Recent Publications of Sidney W. Fox

Symposium Article by Sidney W. Fox

 

Nasa Astrobiology Home Page

 

Photographs of Protocells

Protocells in Aggregates

 

Web-Journal for Thermal Protein Studies

Species Concepts--A Compilation by Don Ugent

Newsletter

Announcements 

1994 ACS Symposium: Origin of Life

Back Issues of Protocell

Issue 1

          Issue 2

Undergraduate Course by Extension

History of Biology (Origin of Life)

Book Reviews

Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

A History of Molecular Biology (1997) by M. Morange 

Principles of Geophysics (1997) by N.H. Sleep & K. Fujita

Introduction to Artificial Life (1997) by C. Adami

Molecular Evolution (1997) by Wen-Hsiung Li

Gaia's Body (1998) by Tyler Volk

Darwin Among the Machines (1997) by George Dyson

Other Interesting Titles

Direct questions regarding this page to:
pappelis@plant.siu.edu
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ugent@siu.edu

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