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Autocatalysis: A bottom-up approach to understanding the origins of life

Objective

"The origin of life is not well understood, and is one of the great remaining questions in science. Autocatalytic chemical reactions have been extensively studied with the aim of providing insight into the principles underlying living systems. In biology, organisms can be thought of as imperfect self-replicators, which produce closely related species, allowing for selection and evolution. Autocatalysis is also an important part of many other biological processes.
This project aims to develop new autocatalytic reactions where two simple chemical building blocks come together to give a more complex product, and then the product aggregates to give primitive cell-like structures or ""protocells"" such as micelles or vesicles. The protocells allow the starting materials to mix more efficiently, speeding up the reaction in time and giving rise to complex behaviour of the protocells. These reactions will serve as models that I hope will contribute to understanding how cell-like systems can emerge from simpler chemicals and be relevant to how life started on earth.
This project will give the opportunity to study chemical systems that may be able to evolve in time, allow development of useful chemical models of important biological processes, and provide ‘bottom-up’ approaches to synthetic biology. This research will potential allow the study evolution in a new ways, develop technology useful to a number of scientific fields, and potentially shed light on the processes that allowed chemistry to become biology on the primitive Earth."

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

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Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2015-CoG

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Host institution

THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 278 073,00
Address
WELLINGTON SQUARE UNIVERSITY OFFICES
OX1 2JD Oxford
United Kingdom

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Region
South East (England) Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Oxfordshire
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 278 073,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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